Torn
by bookEnd
Summary: AU. Very AU. The Doctor's new family is ripped apart. Will they ever find each other? He’s paralysed for a second, just a beat of his hearts, then he hurtles into the Tardis.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Most valuable thing I own is the laptop I type this on. I don't own Doctor Who and I'm not making any profit from this.

A/N: Suggestions for alternative title gratefully accepted. I think I might have picked the wrong genres and I'm not sure if I picked the right rating.

xxx

"So, what is it, what's wrong?" Rose stumbles into the console room, the floor shaking beneath her feet as usual.

He's scanning some readouts, doesn't even look up as she enters.

"Don't know, some kind of disturbance in the time-space continuum, and it's centred on _this _moon." She looks over his shoulder, her gaze following his finger pointing at a small dot tracing an orbit round a larger dot.

xxx

"Anything?" She steps out of the Tardis and leans against the blue wood, her arms cradling a blanket wrapped bundle.

"Not yet," He mutters absently, sweeping something that looks like a car aerial through the air.

"What's that? Over there." She steps forward and squints into the distance.

He turns and looks and before he can do anything, the time storm is upon them, ripping them apart, swallowing Rose in an instant. She's gone before either of them can do anything, before he can grab her hand, before she can throw the bundle towards him.

He's paralysed for a second, just a beat of his hearts, then he hurtles into the Tardis.

xxx

He's chased the storm for a time. Quite a time. So long a time, he can't remember whether he had a life before this frantic chase, leaping round the console, slamming this lever down, wrenching this dial round. Or perhaps he doesn't want to remember.

xxx

He pursues the storm for a while longer before his legs simply give out under him. Heaving himself up so that his eyes are level with the console screen, he watches the storm simply spin away and he collapses into unconsciousness.

xxx

A/N: As you might have guessed, this is my first fanfic. I'd love to hear what you think.


	2. Chapter One

Same disclaimer as before. I don't own them, never will.

xxx

He's aware of a coldness against his face. He's lying on something cold and hard. _ A mortuary slab?_ That regeneration was very messy. He tries to wriggle his fingers and they seem to respond. The surface isn't smooth, it's a grille. Like the Tardis floor. He bolts upright and promptly crumples into a heap. _Oh God. Oh God, I've lost them. I've failed them. I'm sorry, so sorry, oh my beautiful Rose._ He retches but his stomach is painfully empty. _Food?_ He stands gingerly, grabbing at the console for support. Noting the way every bone in his hand is visible under the tightly stretched skin, he tries to imagine how long it has been since…the storm. _Maybe a week? I'm in no fit state to search the whole of space and time. _He'll alleviate the ache in his stomach first than see about trying to ease the pain in his hearts. _Kitchen._ He moves cautiously towards the door that leads deeper into the Tardis.

xxx

The kitchen is very hard to find. Impossible in fact. There is only one corridor leading from the door to the console room and it only leads to one door. He's walked up and down this corridor several times and the Tardis is still stubbornly showing this one door. He eventually puts his head round the door_. Some sort of bedroom. _He steps inside and is immediately aware of some form of time manipulation. Walking towards the centre of the disturbance, he finds a cot. A cot occupied by a small baby. A few tufts of brown hair, brown eyes screwed up in concentration as she attempts to slow time for herself. _If she hadn't done that, she would have died._ A small, detached part of the Doctor's brain manages to make itself heard as his hearts freeze for an instant in horror. Then he's moving faster than he should be able to in a slow-time bubble, scooping her up and holding her tight, so tight he can feel her hearts beating in time with his. _I'm sorry, so sorry._ The best thing left in his life and he nearly loses her through neglect, through chasing what he's lost. He tentatively reaches out to her mind, the first time he's tried to. Her concentration dissolves at his touch and he feels her exhaustion flood her mind as her body relaxes in his arms. He places her tenderly back in the cot. _Jackie._ His conscience prods him. He tries to ignore it. _Jackie._ He tries to override it with the instinct for self-preservation. _Hello Jackie. This is your granddaughter. Her mother and brother have been swallowed by a time storm._ But his conscience continues to insist: _She needs to know._ The last time they'd seen Jackie had been almost a year ago in their timeline.

xxx

_The crack echoed around the room. Rose winced and the Doctor slowly brought a hand to his cheek. Jackie stood with her hands on her hips, breathing slightly heavily. _

"_If you hurt her in any way, I will kill you." She pronounced each word slowly and empathically. "I swear I will kill you dead. I don't care how long it takes, or how many times I have to do it, I will kill you."_

_A few years ago, younger regenerations of the Doctor, Doctors who had never encountered Jacqueline Suzette Anita Tyler, would have laughed at this human woman who believed she could threaten a Time Lord. And they would have regretted it. So he stayed quiet, not doubting her for a second._

"_Is that clear?" she demanded. The Doctor wanted to allay her fears, to tell her that he would give up all his lives for Rose, that he would never dream of hurting her, that the only way she would be hurt would be over his dead body. But his cheek was still stinging. So he simply nodded his head slowly._

_The next instant Jackie had thrown herself at them and was hugging as much of both of them as her arms could encircle._

"_Congratulations."_

xxx

It would be so easy to just disappear. There was the whole of time and space out there, he didn't need to go near London till the 22nd century when Jackie would be long gone. She could just-_spend the rest of her life waiting_, interrupts his conscience. The Doctor pales and yanks the lever.

A/N: If you want me to just quietly delete this, just say so.


	3. Chapter Two

Disclaimer as usual.

A/N: In this fic, Mickey has travelled with Rose and the Doctor and came home again. So I'm going to post this before anything happens to the contrary. This chapter is for **AmyAmidala, MontyPythonFan **and **loralee1**. Thanks for reviewing.

xxx

_This visit was always a possibility. Ever since Rose ran into the Tardis. _The Doctor waits for Jackie to answer the door.

"No, really?" The doorbell sounds. "Look, Bev, someone's at the door. I'll call you back, ok?"

She opens the door.

"Doctor! Where's Rose?"

He doesn't answer, just stares at her glassily.

"Doctor?" She takes in his appearance, the way the crumpled suit hangs loosely, the way he's swaying where he stands, the way she can see every bone in his hands. Hands which clutch…

"Oh!" she breathes, her face alight.

"Jackie, I'd like you to meet Romanadvoratrelundar Rose Delta Jacqueline Tyler. Romana for short." She carefully takes the child into her arms. And discovers how hard it is to catch someone when your arms are full as the Doctor falls to the floor.

xxx

The telly's on but she's not watching it. She's watching the Doctor, sprawled across the sofa. How his chest rises and falls then rises again. How the tips of his fingers are just brushing the carpet. And she's thinking. She told him she'd kill him and she meant it. But now…she doesn't understand. He's obviously got Rose killed, but instead of wanting to kill him, she feels…protective. _Why don't I want to hurt him? Why aren't I angry at him? _He's so thin. It's like he's wasting away, being eaten from the inside out. _By what?_ He begins to stir convulsively. She hurries to his side but he's still deeply asleep, his murmurs slurred so she can only make out a few words: "No…please…sorry…Rose…" She brushes his hair off his forehead as he quiets down and answers her own question;_ regrets, guilt, memories_ and is surprised at herself. _And that's why you aren't angry with him. Because you know that he'll have done everything and then some to save her. He would have sacrificed the world for her. Because you know he loved her as much as you did. _Then she is really shocked at herself.

xxx

She's just finishing lunch when the doorbell rings. For a moment, she panics. If it's anyone she knows, she'll have a job explaining who he is. _Yes, my son-in-law is draped across the sofa unconscious. No, my daughter isn't around. No, I don't know what's wrong. No, honestly, it's fine, he doesn't need a doctor._ Her mind races ahead to the part where the Doctor and Romana are carted off to be experimented on before the doorbell rings again. Maybe she should have put him in the bedroom, but he's heavy even when skeletally thin. Besides, Romana's in the bed, minus pillows and duvet so she doesn't suffocate. She's just wondering whether to pretend she's not in or make a break for the fire escape when Mickey's voice shouts through the door.

She yanks open the door and throws herself at him.

xxx

Mickey is, to say the least, slightly surprised. He'd seen the Tardis, ran up to Jackie's, and now she's sobbing on his shoulder.

So Rose is dead. That's not surprising. He's seen an average day with the Doctor, (even though, as Rose said, there are no average days with the Doctor) and the danger they faced. What is surprising is that the Doctor is completely at Jackie's mercy, and doesn't seem to have a mark on him. And that…_what?_ Mickey can't believe what he's hearing. Obviously he's misunderstanding what Jackie is hiccupping between her sobs. _No, I'm not._ Mickey is stunned, bewildered. _Have I accidentally stepped into another parallel world?_

"He just won't wake up, and he's so thin, and he keeps having nightmares. I tried giving him tea, but it didn't work and I don't know what's wrong. What if it's some alien disease and I can't help him? What if he never wakes up? What…"

Mickey tries to interrupt but finds he's speechless.

xxx

The telly's on but he's not watching it. He's watching Jackie play with her grandchild, Romanasomething. He's trying not to like her-_She's alien-_but failing miserably. She's cute. Got her mother's big brown eyes. It would be much easier to hate her if she had tentacles or dripped green slime. As he watches, Jackie removes her hands from their position of support on Romana's back and Romana promptly topples backwards and lays there laughing. He sees the sparkle in her eyes and, crouching next to Jackie, gives up the fight.

xxx

Mickey's gone out, sent down the town by Jackie to get some formula milk when the Doctor stirs again. This time his words are audible: "No, you can't. Don't. Let me do it. No! I'm sorry, Romana, I tried. You refused, I'm sorry, don't look at me like that!"

Alarmed, Jackie scoops Romana up and places her on her father's chest.

"Ssh, ssh, it's alright, she's here." His eyes fly open. Slowly they focus on her face.

"Jackie?"

"Hello. Are you better?"

"I'm dead. You've killed me for losing Rose. And there is an afterlife and it looks like your flat." The confusion is clear on his face.

"What happened?"

"They-oh God, it was all my fault. I found a disturbance in the space-time continuum and decided to investigate and they were swallowed by the time storm. A perfectly ordinary time storm, but I had to investigate." The Doctor closes his eyes again but tears still seep out under the lashes.

It's hurting him but she has to know. "Is she dead, Doctor?"

"I don't know. They could be, but they could be anywhere in time and space. I could track Rose's Tardis key, but not if I don't know where to start."

"Could…" _They_? They _were_ _swallowed_, they _could_ _be_ _anywhere_. "Doctor…who's they?

His eyes widen in horror. "Do you want me to slap myself and save you the bother?"

"Who's _they_?" She decides to ignore his offer for now.

He takes a deep breath and says "Rose and Matthew. Theta Matthew Jack Tyler. Romana's twin." And winces as Jackie's jaw drops.

"She…you…I have a grandson? A grandson who I will never see?"

"Not definitely…" the Doctor trails off. "Why haven't I been slapped yet?"

"If it troubles you that much." It might be unfair to hit someone who's lying down but she does it anyway. He grins happily.

"Okay, I'm alive. You know, in nine hundred years I don't get slapped once by someone's mother then I meet Rose and, suddenly, being slapped is an occupational hazard."

"That's the first time you-or anyone-has been grinning after I slapped them. Not even the last you and he was always grinning! Why are you so happy about it?"

"Why aren't you smashing through my regenerations?" The tone's teasing but it's a real question. One that she doesn't want to answer right now.

"They're not dead. I know they're not. I might not have psychic powers like you, but if I believed Rose was dead, I would…" she breaks off, knowing she's becoming slightly repetitive. "Whether you like it or not, we're family. You and Romana are the only family I've really got left," she frowns, then smiles slightly. "Listen to me! I knew what I wanted to do with my life and it never involved time-travelling aliens."

"Romana? The last thing I remember is handing her to you."

"She's not that light! You had a nightmare and kept telling her you were sorry, so I gave her to you. Hoped it would calm you down. Woke you up as well."

He lifts his head and sees her sprawled across his chest. "Wrong Romana, Jackie. I hope…" He halts as he lifts her from his chest. She's asleep, breathing slowly and pale. Too pale.

"No. No, she can't have." Hurriedly he shoves her into Jackie's arms. "The _stupid_ child! No, she's just a baby, she wouldn't know." He seems to be talking to himself and Jackie is hesitant to interrupt.

"Doc…Doctor. What is it? Do you want…"

"No! No, keep me away from her." He's trying to squash himself into the corner of the sofa, to have the furthest distance between himself and his daughter. "She's a Time Lady and, as you said, we have certain psychic powers. She can feel I'm weak, and she cares about me, so she was giving me her strength."

"But she's only a child!"

"I know, that's why she can only do it when we're touching."

"Is it normal?" Jackie asks, slightly nervously.

"If, by normal, you mean…" The sentence goes unfinished as the Doctor's eyes roll back and he slumps.

xxx

**Two days later**

Jackie has taken Romana to the park. The flat is deserted, apart from the unconscious Doctor, still slumped upon the sofa. All is silent, until the locked door opens and a woman steps through. She has long, wavy copper hair and bright blue eyes. With a glance at the sofa, she walks through to the kitchen and, taking objects out of the patchwork bag she carries, concocts a mixture she leaves bubbling on the hob. She moves to his side and removes a bottle from the bag. She then proceeds to pour the contents down his throat by the simple expedient of pinching his nose and upending the bottle above his open mouth. He shoots upright, spluttering incoherently.

"Hello," she smiles.

"Who…"

"Now is no time for a healing coma. Now, you, just stay there, I'm busy." She disappears back into the kitchen and returns with a bowl of her concoction. She pushes the bowl and a spoon into his hands. "Eat. You're killing yourself and the worry's killing her."

He eats. She doesn't seem the sort of the women to cross and if she wanted to kill him, there are far more effective ways than waking him up and making him eat poisoned food. She seems the sort of women who would know that.

When he's finished, she gives him another bowlful. And when he finishes that, another. When he's eaten eight bowlfuls of the surprisingly tasty concoction, she throws everything back into the bag and makes as if to sweep out of the door, but he calls after her.

"Tell me…who are you?"

She turns back and smiles. "Just a friend, passing through."

A/N: Sorry if this chapter's a bit disjointed. Had to write it in between bouts of revising. Reviews are good.( I still hope even though, so far, I have 592 hits and only 3 reviews.)


	4. Chapter Three

A/N: My reviews are actually in double figures! Wow! Thank you to everyone who reviewed!

Disclaimer: One day, I may be paid to write. But I am making absolutely no money out of this fic.

He's quite recovered now, though he's never told anyone about the woman. What holds him down to this existence (Rose was right, this isn't living) isn't physical weakness or, if he's honest, any concern over leaving Jackie alone again. After all, it's a time machine, he could go and explore the universe for a week and come back a minute later …or thereabouts, the Tardis is the best ship in the universe but best doesn't really equate to most accurate. It's not being bored of the Universe…how could anyone get bored of the Universe? Especially him, who taught the Face of Boe to look at the universe anew.

Every night, he stares at the sky, and even when he can't see a single star, he knows that they're there and something inside him that might be called a soul cries out to be amongst them. Then he steps inside, burying it beneath the surface of the mask.

What grounds him is the impossibility of travelling without Rose. She could make the dustiest moon bright with possibilities. Anything could be out there. She didn't know what was out there, so she had to explore. Without her, he knows, those vibrant markets, fiery sunsets and beautiful landscapes will lose some indefinable aspect of their allure. When her hand was in his, everything seemed somehow brighter and more vivid. Even when they were running for their lives. His hand is always empty now.

xxx

She's noticed. Every night, for the last three months, he's been standing on the balcony, gazing upwards. She knows he wants to leave; what she doesn't know is why he doesn't. Three months of watching TV and doing the housework. He's developed some sort of twitch. Ever so often, he'll slowly curl his fingers over then force them straight again. He did it when he came back with the shopping and stood by while she unpacked it, showing him where to put things. He does it when they're watching telly and when she comes back with a soft purple rabbit toy for Romana. And especially when he looks at the sky. He's welcome as long as he wants to stay but she knows he doesn't want to stay.

xxx

"Hello, anybody in?" he calls as he manoeuvres the pram through the doorway. The lift is always working now, thanks to regular applications of his sonic screwdriver. He pushes the pram in the living room and unclips the straps that hold Romana in. Lifting her, he makes a show of buckling under her weight. She giggles delightedly.

"You're getting heavy, my girl. And we wouldn't want you dropped on your pretty head now, would we?" If anyone had told him, over five years ago, when he first grabbed Rose's hand that it would lead to him cooing over their daughter in a London council flat, he wouldn't have believed them. At least he wasn't spouting gibberish such as "Oo wants a biccie? Does diddums want a biccie?" At least, not yet. Jackie's voice made him turn round.

"You're back."

"Obviously. Sorry it took so long, they were out of…is something wrong?"

"_Why_ are you back?"

"Sorry?" He looks politely bemused and her hand itches to slap that expression off his face, to get some response.

"You're not the Doctor." It's a statement. "The Doctor isn't human. He doesn't, he _can't_…"

His fingers curl over and he forces them straight.

"You're doing it again! Why do you keep doing that?"

"My hand is always empty," he murmurs, almost to himself.

"What…" Memories suddenly flood her mind. _Walking back to the flat in the snow- no, the ash- behind the Doctor and Rose, their fingers still entwined. The time she bought them both a pair of gloves when they came for Christmas 2008, the coldest winter for over a century, and then never once saw them wear them…she had been surprised their hands hadn't got frozen together. The Doctor and Rose standing together, joined by their clasped hands as they told her their news._

"You're hiding."

The mask shatters. She would cheer if she wasn't so worried about what lies underneath.

"How can I? How, _how_ can I just… just go back, travel the universe, without her? I can't go back to how it was before her. That life is gone."

"I imagine that would be rather difficult to recreate. I don't think Romana would understand that she had to pretend to be non-existent."

He looks down in surprise. He's got so used to her weight in his arms; he's forgotten he's holding her.

"That's your daughter. Rose's daughter. The last Time Lady. There's a universe out there, Doctor, and it's her inheritance."

He stares at her for an interminable time; she meets his gaze resolutely. Suddenly, a grin stretches across his face and, grabbing her hand, he dives for the door.

xxx

He's pulled her down five flights of steps, too fast for her legs to keep up and across the tarmac to the Tardis. While her body tries to recover, her mind is trying to work out how it is that she has practically flown down five flights of stairs and not broken her neck. The Doctor disappears into the depths of the Tardis, reappears minus miraculously still-sleeping Romana and disappears again out of the front door. Five minutes later, she's breathing normally, though her mind has made no progress, when he staggers through the door laden with bags. He appears offended at her amusement when he drops a couple of bags and then manages to trip over them.

"Blame Romana. Most of this is hers. How can she have accumulated so much stuff already? She's not even six months old!"

"The doting grandparent is supposed to shower her descendants with gifts. Besides, it serves you right for making me a granny so young." Her eye falls on a case still dangling from his arm. "Hang on, that's mine!"

"It was already packed and everything. Going somewhere, were you?"

"It's my overnight case for when I go round to Howard's." It is really none of his business.

He smiles and extends his arm. "That's quite a long term relationship. It must be about, what, four years now?"

"In November," she returns to the subject, "but why have you got it?"

"I thought you deserved a reward. A reward to the tune of a week on Vifildis."

"You want to drag me off to some planet with a name that sounds like a particularly nasty disease?"

"It's famous, galaxy-wide."

She isn't impressed.

"It's a pamper planet. Spas, massages, mud baths, every single beauty treatment you can think of and many you won't have heard of. I'm friends with the owner, saved his life once. I can just drop you off and you can spend a week getting the full V.I.P. treatment. Then I'll even let you loose on Jupiter Five with my psychic credit card. It's a space station, a massive shopping centre. About a thousand times bigger than Bluewater. And my psychic credit card has unlimited credit," he adds, in response to her mystified look.

"But why…"

"Jackie, you've given us the universe. It must run in the family," he smiles.

"And I'll even bring you back in time for your beans on toast!"

She's impressed.

A/N: Sorry it's a bit short, but update should be quite soon. This story probably won't be finished for quite a while. I would really appreciate reviews.


	5. Chapter Four

Disclaimer: Hmm…let's see. Unless the ownership of one DVD, a poster, the Shooting Scripts, six 9th Doctor books and two 10th Doctor books constitute legal ownership of the whole concept of Doctor Who, I don't own them.

"Dadtor…" Romana pads into the console room barefoot.

"Romana," the Doctor sighs. He has given up trying to dissuade Romana from using that name after she spent a week calling him Theta Sigma. So cheeky. Just like her mother.

"I can't find my socks. The Tardis is hiding the laundry room."

He reprovingly slaps the console. "Stop it." Honestly. The Tardis hadn't played tricks when Susan was onboard. The last time was when Adam had joined them. But that was because the Tardis had hated Adam. The Tardis adores Romana, but seems to find playing a few games irresistible.

A few creaks sound.

"And no sulking!" Take the most advanced technology in this universe, and possibly a few others, add a Time Tot, what do you get? A mischievous Tardis and a grubby-footed Romana, his own unique version of domestic.

"Try it now." Turning away from the console, he groans. "And, for the last time, put that thing away."

"But I like it." She picks one end of the ridiculously long scarf off the floor.

"I don't care. You are not going out dressed like that. And I don't want to have to say that to you again for at least another ten years."

She pauses in the doorway to stick her tongue out then runs, the Doctor after her.

xxx

He places a bookmark on the page and lays it aside before fixing her with the sternest look he can. Evidently, that isn't much for she appears totally unashamed.

"I put you to bed."

"I'm not tired." The phrase every child uses to delay bedtime, but in her case it is true. That was the aspect of alienness that Jackie had most objection to. Especially at 3 am.

"What's that you've got?"

"A book. I thought it was pretty." She holds out the object. An ordinary notebook with a single pressed bloom stuck to the front. She doesn't notice the strange expression that comes over his face, like a shutter sliding down. "I found this room, with a flower on the door. And there were boxes of stuff in it."

"Put it back, Romana."

"What is it?"

"Your mother's diary. Put it back and _go to bed._"

"Have you ever read it?"

"No. And I'm not going to."

"Can I start a diary?"

"If you want. I'll buy you a book to write in if you go to bed."

"You don't go to bed. You read or mess with the Tardis." He stares at her, then grins widely.

"You are _exactly _like your mother. She was always accusing me of unnecessary tampering." He leaps to his feet and takes her hand. "Come on, then. The Lion King?"

"Again?" She looks up at her father. "First one to find the cinema gets to choose."

"Okay, ready, set, GO!"

xxx

"Perhaps this wasn't the best place," the Doctor mutters under his breath as he pushes through the crowds thronging the market place, Romana clinging tightly to his hand.

He's dressed in his usual suit, but, after much argument, Romana is wearing the full-length white drape that signified she is a young girl, completely uninterested in marriage proposals.

"Couldn't we have gone somewhere where five-year-olds don't have to declare their views on marriage?" she shouts over the noise of the crowd.

He looks back at her. "You have to respect other cultures, Romana."

"I can't hear…ow!" A small humanoid alien with grey skin dodges through the crowds and barges between them. The crowd moves to let him through, carrying the Doctor and Romana away from each other.

"Dadtor!"

"Get back to the Tardis!" he yells. He's already lost sight of her. "I'll meet you there."

She manages to push her way through to the edge of the market. Sometimes being small has advantages. _Yes, down there. I recognise that palm tree_.

xxx

She hasn't gone too far when the way is blocked. By a large blue alien that looks a little like a Stegosaurus standing on its hind legs. She turns back the other way, but there's a twin.

"Yesss. Oh well done, boysss." A small lizard-like creature struts round from behind the twin blocking the way she came. "What a pretty little thing. Oh, ssshe'll get usss a tidy amount."

No amount of terror can stop this laugh. This is a helpless laugh, laughing-till-you-can't-breath-laugh. Doubled over with laughter, not exactly the greatest position to be in when you really want to escape a life of slavery.

The lizard-thing hisses in annoyance. "What exactly isss ssso funny, pretty thing?"

It's all she can do to look up, point a shaking finger at him and gasp "You…you look exactly like…like Randall from…from Monsters Inc." before the laughter claims her again.

The lizard-thing clicks his fingers and gestures to the dinosaur-things, who advance menacingly. She knows she's going to be hurt, and possibly killed, and part of her brain is trying to think of a way out, but she's not making much progress because the majority of her brain is gaping in disbelief at the way she's standing there laughing when she's just about to be beaten and sold into slavery. Laughing because a very small part of her brain has noticed that this alien slaver looks so much like the bad guy in an animated children's film.

The laughter abruptly stops as she's yanked down a side alley. Partly through surprise and partly because she suddenly has a headache. There's shouting behind her; they're running too fast for her to look up. All she can see is a hand- a long, slim hand with the nails cut short- and quite a lot of loose dark robe. She wonders who they've recently lost. Then she wonders who it is, and why they're doing this. Then she nearly goes flying as they suddenly stop and double back. "What is it? Who are you?"

The figure says nothing, just points down the entrance to yet another side alley and she is forcibly reminded of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. This entire planet seems to be rife with resemblances to fictional characters. She'd like to think that this is just a particularly strange dream, but knows it's not. The resemblance vanishes as the figure runs off; the hood flying back like it must have done before, revealing long orange hair streaming behind. If this was a dream, she could wake up now, but as it is, she's lost in a maze of alleyways, her key is cold and there might possibly still be slavers after her. At least her headache's disappeared. She considers her options. _Am I going to blindly run down an alley that I was directed to by a strange woman who saved me from slavers or am I going to choose another alley to run blindly down?_ She starts running down the alley before she can change her mind.

xxx

She's still running, following the twisting alley. The part of her mind that found the appearance of the lizard-thing so funny is now trying to panic. Her key is still cold, she's even more lost than before and she's getting tired. But the majority of her brain is determinedly not listening. So she carries on running, because if she stops, she might actually have to think about the situation and listen to that part of her brain, and she's not going to do that more than she has to. She can tell that that part of her brain is going to get her in big trouble in the future. So she runs and runs- until she runs smack into a pair of legs.

"Hey!"

Two arms hoist her up into the air. She squirms and writhes and kicks, keeping her head turned away from her assailant. Some species have the ability to hypnotise through eye contact. If she's hypnotised, the rest of her life won't be her own. She won't even be aware of living.

"Let go of me! I won't be a slave, I won't! I'll run away and find my dad. If you take me, he'll come looking for me and…."

"Whoa, back up! I'm not a slaver." She risks a peek at the hands on her arms. Definitely human. Safe from hypnotism then.

"You would say that though, wouldn't you?"

"I've been a lot of things, sweetheart, but never a slaver of children. If it bothers you so much, I'll put you down and you can go find your dad." She looks up. And receives one of the biggest shocks of her young life.

"I-I know you!"

Captain Jack Harkness grins down at her. "In that case, you have the advantage."

A/N: Okay, so it's still short. I promise the next chapter will be longer. What do you think though? Should Jack stay or should he disappear again?


	6. Chapter Five

Disclaimer: I just realised I own Romana! Yay! But other than her, absolutely nothing.

A/N: Sorry for the delay in updating. I started to write a chapter, then decided it would work better after this one. This chapter is dedicated to **Donna Dark** for being the 29th reviewer (I was born on 29th June, so it's sort of my lucky number.)

She knows she's got the advantage. And she's going to make the most of it.

"Captain Jack Harkness. Born in the 51st century. Time Agent, turned freelancer after they stole two years of your memories. Sorry, you preferred the term criminal, didn't you?"

He's more than a little spooked. If she is a mercenary, she's the youngest he's ever seen.

"Accidentally nearly destroyed the human race in 1941, after you forgot to set your alarm clock for Volcano Day. Only being ever to answer back to a Dalek. Also, apparently, the only being ever to survive being exterminated."

She moves her hand to his collar and pulls out his Tardis key. It's faintly warm.

"Come on then." He's not holding her tightly any more, it's easy to twist and fall lightly to the ground. She takes his hand. "Let's go find my dad."

Stunned, Jack follows her meekly. His brain is so occupied in thinking _what the hell_ that he's not paying any attention to his senses. Especially touch, which is shouting loudly about there being something familiar about the temperature of the skin.

xxx

"Romana! God, I was worried- didn't you hear me shouting?" The Doctor stands by the Tardis.

She hadn't heard him shouting. Her mind had been too occupied with laughing and running to hear him.

"If you're not careful, I might have to tie you to me. Got you a book though." He pulls a small, sturdy, thick book from the cloth bag over his shoulder. It's a beautiful book, deep blue velvety cover inset with chips of something similar to mother of pearl, in a pattern she can't quite make out from where she stands, with pages of fine parchment and normally, she'd be hugging him by now but Jack still holds her hand. He's staring at the Tardis in shock.

"Don't you like it?" He's crestfallen.

"Oh yes. It's lovely. It's absolutely _gorgeous_. Thank you, thank you so much."

She still hasn't moved. He's bewildered.

"Shall we go then? How about Ralady, meadows with giant flowers. You'd love it."

"Dadtor… I've, sort of, found someone." And she pulls Jack out of the shadows.

The Doctor gapes, then bounds forward and crushes Jack in a hug.

"Hell! Get off me!"

The Doctor backs off and smiles. "You've changed. The old Jack wouldn't mind someone throwing themselves at him."

"Well, the new Jack likes to know their name at least."

"I know! Twenty questions! I love that game. Question number one, what is a 1960's police box doing here?"

"I imagine it's a disguise for a Tardis with a faulty chameleon circuit."

"Correct-a-mundo! Oh dear, I said it again. And who travels in space and time in a Tardis that looks like a police box?" He's grinning widely.

"The Doctor."

"So…"

"So, where's the Doctor?" Jack interrupts.

The Doctor resists the urge to roll his eyes. Stupid apes. Maybe, just maybe, one day, somebody might figure it out for themselves. But now, he has to go through this scene _again_. He sighs in resignation.

"Hello!"

"Hello to you too. Where's the Doctor?"

"Right here."

"What!" Jack turns in a full circle. "I don't see him."

_Oh please. Rose wasn't this slow._

_Rose saw me regenerate. Slightly more difficult to deny._

"I'm the Doctor."

"Er, no, you're not."

"Er, yes, I am."

"Excuse me, I know what the Doctor looks like. Big nose, big ears, leather-"

The Doctor interrupts. "You know what my ninth self looked like. I'm the tenth. New new Doctor."

"What happened to him?"

"He turned into me. Regeneration."

"But that's just a myth."

"Yes Jack, and the Time Lords were a myth, Gallifrey was a myth, the Time War was a myth."

"When…"

"Just after Satellite Five. Sorry about leaving you behind, thought you were dead."

"I was," he paused. "Why? What happened?"

"Long story. But we've got time." He bounds forward, grabs Romana's hand and pulls her back next to the Tardis. Opening the door, he pauses and looks back. "You coming then?"

"Oh yes, you're not leaving me behind again."

xxx

"So how did Rose take the regeneration?"

"It could have been better. Especially considering I did it to save her life."

"But she absorbed the Time Vortex to save your life."

"I know that! Probably might have been better if I hadn't been sleeping through an alien invasion. The Sycorax- they wanted to enslave half of Earth's population. But I woke up, saved the day, then Harriet Jones goes and blows them up," he adds in response to Jack's questioning look.

"Slaver scum deserve it."

The Doctor's eyes darken. "It was murder."

"What did the Sycorax look like?" Romana perches on the worktop. She's heard most of it before but that doesn't stop her listening avidly.

"Basic humanoid shape, sharp teeth, exoskeleton…why?"

She tries her best shrug. "Don't know, just wondered."

He's not convinced and is about to ask some awkward questions when Jack breaks in.

"Excuse me, but who actually are you? And where is Rose?"

"Umm," the Doctor glances at Romana, "well…"

Taking pity on him, Romana jumps down. "Alright, greetings lesson. When, where, who?"

"Maid, nineteenth century, England, Europe, Earth."

"Thanks a lot." She glares at the Doctor then bobs a curtsey to Jack.

"Romanadvoratrelundar Rose Delta Jacqueline Tyler, at your service."

"Okay?" She jumps back up onto the worktop.

"Full marks," the Doctor smiles approvingly.

"I hate curtseying. It's so…so simpering."

"Next stop, 1897."

"Romanawhat?" Jack exclaims belatedly.

"Romanadvoratrelundar Rose Delta Jacqueline Tyler."

"Sorry, didn't catch that. Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"What is wrong with you? Was he this dense before?"

"No, Jack was always very quick-witted apart from when…" the Doctor suddenly bursts out laughing, "I know what's wrong with you."

"Do not."

"I do so! You're hungover! On Pitrainian vodka! You have no taste," he crows.

Romana's puzzled, so he explains. "Pitrainian vodka won't give you a normal hangover. You can drink as many bottles as you want, and the effects take a while to hit, but it severely impairs your mental processes until it passes out of your system. It's a bit like sleep-walking."

"Can't you just give him a tablet and then we can explain?"

"Nah, that wouldn't work. It's not a normal hangover, remember. There's only one way to cure a Pitrainian hangover and it's much more fun." He leaves the room and returns a minute later with a full bucket of water. She giggles excitedly and he flashes her a mischievous grin before dumping the icy contents over Jack's head.

A minute later, after much incomprehensible shouting, Jack is back.

"Blurrgh… what did you say your name was?"

"Romanadvoratrelundar Rose Delta Jacqueline Tyler."

"What_?"_

"Ro-"

"No, no, not the name. Did you say Tyler? Romana _Rose_ Tyler? And…" He flattens the palms of his hands against her chest. "Two hearts! This Doctor's your dad?"

He suddenly appears to go inexplicably crazy, jumping up in the air and whooping loudly. "That is…fantastic! Oh, that is brilliant! You two finally stopped messing around. Congratulations! Where's Rose?"

The Doctor, who has been watching Jack's fit of insanity with a wide grin, suddenly seems to close up, darkening the room.

"I don't know."

"What-"

"I lost her, Jack. They were swallowed by a time storm. And I've only hope that they're still alive. The whole of time and space, I could search for a million years and not find them. It was my fault, my curiosity. Romana was only four months old when her family was ripped in half."

Just like Jackie five years ago, Jack picks up on the plural. "They?"

"Rose and Matthew. My wife and our son. Theta Matthew Jack Tyler. Romana's twin."

"Jack?"

"Yes, Jack, Jack. We named him after you."

"Where did you get all the names? I mean, Romana…thingy, that's a mouthful."

"Romanadvoratrelundar was a Time Lady who travelled with me. Don't look like that, it wasn't like that. Maybe, if she had stayed…but she got summoned back to Gallifrey. Died in the Time War with the rest of them. Only on her third. Rose, obviously after Rose. Delta. That's a Time Lord name as well. Alpha, Omega, Sigma. Where do you think the Greeks got the names from? And Jacqueline, after Rose's mother."

"Nice names. You lucky girl."

"Matthew is or was younger. Theta, another Time Lord name, also my name. Matt-"

"You have a name?" Jack is incredulous.

"Yes, even Gallifreyians found pronouncing my full name difficult. You wouldn't have a chance. Theta Sigma, but I prefer the Doctor, thank you, Jack."

Noting with trepidation the look in Jack's eyes, the Doctor continues, "Matthew, because Rose said she'd always loved the name, and Jack after you."

"How many times did you get slapped?"

"Only twice. And I actually asked for it."

"You what? That's just…" Jack shakes his head in disbelief, then really wishes he hadn't.

"You need to get to bed."

"I need… what about her! I must be at least thirty years older."

"Yes, but I'm not hungover on Pitrainian vodka."

"And she's a Time Lady. You know we don't need much sleep. You apes sleep about a third of your lives away."

"Oh, _please _tell me I'm not going to have two of you tinkering with the Tardis."

"Nope, I do that when Romana goes to bed."

"We watch films!"

"And Romana has much better taste than Rose. Goodbye, chick flicks and hello, Disney!"

"Disney? Isn't that worse?"

"Nope. I like Disney. When I was saving the world from the Sycorax, I found myself quoting the Lion King. Although Pixar is good."

Jack resists the urge to shake his head again. This was a completely different Doctor, in a completely different situation. But he can live with that, already warming to this Doctor and his daughter.

"So you get to bed. Sleep off the rest of that hangover. And we'll go watch something." He turns to his daughter. "What do you think? Early 21st century? How about Monsters Inc.?"

Romana stares at him. She can feel the rational part of her brain shutting down, making way for that tiny part. And she is helpless, feeling the laughter rise up and overwhelm her.

"Romana?"

"The lizard-thing!" she gasps, breathless with laughter.

And in between bouts of laughter, the Doctor extracts the whole story from Romana. The laughter stops when she sees how angry he is. But she doesn't see his reaction to her tale of the woman with orange hair; a flicker of an eyelid and a quickly smothered expression. When she's finished, he storms out of the kitchen. Running behind, Romana and Jack follow him into the console room, where he's already yanking controls. As the Tardis settles, he snaps "Stay here" and is gone.

Jack tries to restrain her; withstanding elbows in his stomach, kicks at his ankles and scratches on the back of his hands, but when she kicks her leg up behind her, the pain is excruciating. His grip loosens for a second but that's all she needs, throwing across the room at the door. It rattles slightly but otherwise doesn't move. She pounds on it several times before sinking to the floor, sobbing hopelessly. He's locked it from the outside. She offers no resistance as he scoops her up and carries her out of the room. The Tardis is most helpful and positions a room which he assumes is hers just outside the control room. He lays her down on the bed and sits down next to her as she continues crying into the wall. Slowly her sobs fade and her breathing slows. She's cried herself to sleep. He takes the opportunity to study the room. It looks a lot like Rose's did. Pretty coverlet on the bed, but purple instead of pink. Alien oddments displayed on every surface. Bedside table, lamp, photo. He studies the photograph. This new Doctor and Romana, standing by an ornate sandcastle made from sparkling purple sand. Judging from the amount of sand they were covered in, they'd built it themselves. He wondered who had taken the photo. Looking round the room, he spots two more photo frames. He crosses the room to study them. One of her with Jackie, and one of Rose holding a baby, who stares at the camera deadpan. She looks so happy. He studies the child, dressed in a white unisex stretchsuit. Big ears. This must be Romana's missing brother. He thinks he recognises the background. Kallimonteg. Judging by the crowds, the annual Festival. Abandoned soon after the economic collapse caused by the massacre of the photographers. Their economy was based on an almost religious sect of photographers, who treated photography as a revered art. Problem was, no one recognised that until the photographers were gone. Paranoia. It's wiped out hundreds, if not thousands of civilisations. He's roused from his thoughts by the sound of the Tardis engines.

He runs through the corridors; the Tardis has moved the bedroom away from the console room and stops in the doorway to the console room. The Doctor is bent over the railing, retching.

"What did you do?" He hates the sound of his own voice, intruding.

The Doctor straightens up. "Nothing permanent. But he won't be kidnapping any more children."

"You frightened her," Jack is expressionless. "She was frightened…not of you, but for you. She didn't know what you were going to do, anything could have happened."

The Doctor doesn't appear to have heard. He draws a long shuddering breath. "A cellar full of small girls. An underground slave market. All the girls that weren't educated enough, or pretty enough, or passive enough. All the girls that weren't wanted. Knockdown prices, but the product wasn't guaranteed good condition. And they all looked like Romana."

"She's asleep. She cried herself to sleep. She's in her bedroom."

The Doctor brushed past him. Jack knew without turning round that he'd gone to Romana's room.

xxx

_(Two hours later)_

She stirred, slowly returning to consciousness. He tightened his arms round her, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

"I'm here. Don't worry, I'm here. I'm so sorry, Romana, I'll never leave you again." Smiling, warm and safe, she drifted back to sleep.

A/N: Wow, I managed to write a long chapter. Next chapter should be up soon because I've already written some of it. But I'd love to hear what you think of this chapter, so please review.


	7. Chapter Six

Disclaimer: Doctor Who is not owned by me. This fic is not money-making.

A/N: This chapter is for everyone who wanted the reappearance of Rose and especially **MontyPythonFan**.

She catches a last glimpse of the Doctor's face before she is ripped away and darkness claims her.

She is falling very fast. And she is going to hit whatever is down there very hard. She curls her body protectively round her son, asleep in her arms, then hits something very hard. It hurts a lot.

Unfamiliar smells. Unfamiliar sounds. Unfamiliar bed. She cracks one eye open. Unfamiliar ceiling. Worst line of dialogue ever heading her way.

"Where am I?"

A female human leans over her. "Hello. You're on Earth Colony 2794, now known as Mayblossom." _Mayblossom? Yuck._

"What's the date?"

"25th July 623,996 by Old Earth reckoning. That's how we measure time here. I'm afraid I can't tell you any other way."

"Oh, no. It's fine. Old Earth is just fine…Why am I here?"

"We found you out on the plain. Both your legs are broken."

"Can't you just, sort of, zap them better?"

"If we had the technology, but sadly it has broken. Ever since we declared our independence from the Ninth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, we have received no supplies."

"Why did you do that?"

"You are curious. I can tell you're not from there. We broke away because it was old and decadent, brutal in its neglect. It is a long and unhappy story. But we are learning. We are farming the land, using primitive medicine. We are living as people did over half a million years ago but perhaps that is good. Perhaps we need to start again, unburdened by technology."

"Primitive medicine?" Rose indicates her plaster-encased legs.

"Yes, that method dates back to the 20th century. A type of local rock, powdered and mixed with water, makes quite a good substitute. I'm afraid it'll take about six to eight weeks before we can take it off."

Rose ignores the feeling of déjà vu. 622001 years on, and they're saying the same thing she had heard in 1995.

They seem like nice people, but you can't tell.

"Where's Matthew?"

"Excuse me?"

"Where's my son?"

"Oh, the child you were holding. We took him to the nursery."

"I… I can have him back, can't I? You don't bring all the children up away from families or anything like that?"

"Of course you can have him back. This is a place of freedom, we welcome any. We're not going to take your child simply because he isn't human. Two hearts, though. Never seen that before. Could you tell us the species of the child's father?"

"No."

"Very well. We will not have anyone say we invade their privacy. Would you like to see him?"

He's brought in and she hugs him tight, one arm around his back and back up to her throat. Her Tardis key is not just not warm, it's so cold it burns her. A colony that has declared independence. Cut off from supplies, living the life of half a million years ago. No ships will be stopping. No space ships and definitely no time ships. And she cries quietly as she sees her life stretch out in front of her.

xxx

"The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheels on the bus go round and round all day long." She sits outside, enjoying the two-sunned sunset, bouncing Matthew up and down. He chuckles.

"The door on the bus goes open and shut, open and shut, open and shut. The door on the bus goes open and shut all day long." On every "shut", she drops a hand in front of his eyes. He tries to swipe at her hand. She laughs, but a small part of her brain is delivering its verdict on the situation: _If someone had told me, back when the Doctor first grabbed my hand, that it would lead to me sitting outside my cottage on the planet Mayblossom, over half a million years in the future, enjoying a two-sunned sunset and playing with my alien baby, I would have told them they were on something._

The suns are descending rapidly now. One is halfway past the horizon, or the ruins in the distance that make up the horizon. The giant structures became unsafe and were taken apart to provide building materials. She decides to skip a few verses.

"The baby on the bus says, "Wah, wah, wah! Wah, wah, wah! Wah, wah, wah!"  
The baby on the bus says, "Wah, wah, wah!" All day long. But don't you go getting any ideas!" she adds sternly. One sun is now completely gone, and it's cooling rapidly. It's getting dark too, which is why she doesn't see the person who sits down on the other end of the bench. "I must say, you're the only person who's ever appreciated my singing. One more verse." She remembers the last verse. She always hated this verse as a child, it made her cry. But she's sings it anyway with only the slightest wobble in her voice. "The mummy on the bus says "I love you, I love you, I love you." The daddy on the bus says "I love you too." All day long."

Suddenly a voice comes from her left. "That is an Old Earth rhyme. How do you know it?"

She recognizes the voice. It's Lydia from the shambles that serves as a library.

"I… I don't know. I just, sort of, picked it up."

"That tune has been lost for hundreds of thousands of years. Who are you? Where do you come from?"

"I'm Rose Tyler. You know that."

"A name doesn't tell anyone anything. A name becomes the description of a person, rather than the other way round. Where do you come from?"

"A very long way away."

"In time as well as space."

"How did you…I mean, what do you mean?"

"You're a time-traveller, aren't you? One of the select few."

"I'm hardly posh!"

"What does that mean? Posh by whose definition? Where are you from?"

"What good will it do you or me?"

"My dear, this planet is a place of freedom. We didn't take your child just because he wasn't human and we're not going to lock you up because you're not exactly local. The only inconvenience you might suffer will be everyone's questions. Especially mine," Lydia laughs gently.

Rose considers. Everyone has been so kind to her in the year she's been here and Lydia already good as knows. On the other hand, she doesn't know if she's ready to tell them or anyone about the Doctor.

"I'm Rose Tyler. I was born in 1987."

"1987? You mean the 20th century?" She's incredulous, she hadn't expected the gap to be that big. "Were you…part of the timeline, or were your parents just passing through?"

"No, I was part of the timeline. Born in 1987, to a mother born in 1966, with a grandmother born in 1941. Started school in 1992, left school in 2003. Got a job, and left it in 2005, next stop the year 5 billion, to see the Sun expanding, destroying the Earth. Travelled for…about 5 years, I suppose. Had an accident, ended up here."

"Brilliant. What you must have seen… Millennium celebrations? First contact in 2005?"

"I was there." No need to elaborate.

"But I must say, time travellers aren't usually in the habit of taking souvenirs along with them. Who was it that picked you up in 2005?"

"Someone."

"And where does your son fit in? The someone who picked you up…the father?"

"Yes. And this is my business."

"You must miss him."

"Yes. And my daughter." _Why am I saying this? This is none of her business._ "His twin. I think about them. How much they might have changed."

"I suppose they do grow up quickly. Does Matthew look like his father?"

She glances down att the big ears and blue eyes, almost black in the darkness. "Sort of. In a way. Yes."

She doesn't know why she's about to do what she is. Maybe it's just the relief of being able to talk to someone about it. "Do you want to come inside?"

Inside, she lights the candles. They're trying to rig up some kind of hydroelectricity using the waterfall but no luck so far. She puts the now-dozing Matthew into the cot and tucks the blanket round him, trying to smother her thoughts. Seriously doubting thoughts. Thoughts that scream at her for being so stupid. The thoughts that had led her to build up a defensive wall around herself and her memories. But that's not Rose Tyler. Just a mask of anonymity. And she's sick of the confining walls.

"Squinge?" she offers.

"Oh, thank you. That would be lovely." Rose serves her a mug of the hot drink.

They sit in silence for a while. Rose breaks it.

"So who are you?"

"Lydia from the library. That's what everybody knows me as. I'm nothing special."

"Now_that_ is where you're wrong."

"What do you mean?"

Rose rises and crosses to a cupboard, taking out a wallet.

"This is the only thing I had on me when I…had my accident." The image of her mobile as she last saw it comes to mind, sitting uselessly on her bedside table.

She pulls a piece of paper out and presses it into Lydia's hand. "Take this and read it later."

"What is it?"

"Just something I picked up years ago."

Lydia isn't fooled by the nonchalant manner. Whatever it was has to be important to Rose for her to have carried it around for years.

"Thank you," she says softly.

xxx

Months pass. Lydia and Rose become best friends. The poem that Rose gave to Lydia quickly becomes the expression of the ideals that this new society is founded on. Although they do have to change the word "human" to "living". It's copied out many times till everyone owns a copy. The hydroelectrics are finally working and the society slowly but surely stabilises.

Every day, Rose helps Lydia in the library and every night, they talk for hours. Rose tells Lydia about the 20th century and her travels. She never mentions his name, or talks about the Tardis. Lydia knows of "someone" and his ship. Then Lydia tells Rose of her life, what she's lived through. One night, she tells Rose about how her father was killed accidentally because he looked like someone whom the Ninth Great and Bountiful Human Empire needed out of the way. Rose shows her the photograph from her wallet, of the Doctor and Romana at Kallimonteg.

"You said he looked like his father."

"He does," Rose replies and leaves Lydia puzzled.

Matthew's second word is "lyddy." They're not sure what his first is, neither of them recognised it as a word but they know it wasn't nonsense syllables.

When sorting through piles of salvaged books at the library, she finds a book she recognises from the Tardis library. It's incomprehensible, the pages covered in the swirls and circles of Gallifreyan text. She takes it home; she knows Lydia will understand.

Matthew's second birthday comes around and Rose realises her son isn't a baby anymore. She and Lydia abandon the library for the day and spend their time gathering berries. It provides the juice for drinks, it can be crushed and frozen for ice lollies, cooked in pies and tarts, or simply left raw in dishes which the kids seize mushy handfuls from. They all get so coated in the stuff that the entire population under ten, and Rose and Lydia, are purple for two weeks.

She fills her days with work and play, takes pleasure in the smallest thing, and dreams at night. Dreams of the Doctor.

A/N: I know it's short. And slightly pointless. It's really just to establish Rose's situation. But I would really appreciate reviews. (Anonymous accepted.)


	8. Chapter Seven

Disclaimer: There is no reason to sue me.

The Doctor gingerly pokes his head round the door and ducks to avoid a soaked dishcloth. "You know, generally breakfast involves putting the food in your mouth, not all over each other."

Jack and Romana freeze guiltily and slowly turn towards the door. Jack has a bad case of sugar dandruff, the latest in bacon shoulder pads and an interesting baked bean tie-dye pattern across his t-shirt. Romana's hair hangs down in rat's tails. Here and there, a soggy cornflake is visible.

"He started it," Romana points at Jack.

"I… I…You liar!" Jack splutters as the Doctor raises an eyebrow.

"You did! You took unfair advantage of your height to pour milk over my head."

"Well, who climbed on the table and dumped the sugar bowl on my head?"

The Doctor spots a piece of the sugar bowl residing in a puddle of what looks like a mix of baked bean juice and milk. He sighs. He had liked that sugar bowl.

"Who…"

"Romana, go and shower. Jack, clean this up."

Romana skips to the doorway, deftly avoiding the puddles, turns back and sticks her tongue out at Jack and, at a warning look from the Doctor, vanishes through the doorway.

"But… but… that's so unfair! Why do I have to clean it up? She started it!"

"Maybe she did. And maybe she didn't. But you're not the one I have to take to see Jackie. We'll keep her in the flat to give you time to clean it up. The mops are in that cupboard behind you. Have fun!" He quickly pulls the door closed and locks it with his sonic screwdriver.

Jack stands in the centre of the devastation. Heaving a sigh, he turns round and takes a step towards the cupboard, putting his foot right in the middle of a puddle of milk. It is cold and wet and sticky. Very uncomfortable to sit in, he decides a few seconds later.

xxx

"Remember when we went to that beach with purple sand?" Jackie watches Romana industriously building a large mound of sand with a small boy.

"It took ages to get all the sand off," the Doctor agrees.

"Is it like that, all over the universe?"

"Sand isn't sand unless you can tip it out of your shoes months later. Someone did once invent sand that wouldn't get everywhere, something to do with repulsion between sand and other materials."

"Did it work?"

"Nah. Each grain of sand repelled not only other materials but all the other grains of sand. There's probably still a grain or two shooting around in outer space."

Jackie laughs.

"Talking of that…" He pulls out the mobile Rose bought for him years ago.

"Jack?"

"What now?"

"I've got a present for you! The cutest frilly apron!"

Some strange strangled noises issue from the phone. Eventually Jack appears to clear his throat. "I've finished the cleaning."

"Did you have fun?"

The strangled noises make a reappearance.

"Teach you to be a bad influence on my daughter."

"SHE STARTED…" The Doctor cuts the connection and drops the phone back in his pocket and looks over at Romana. They've finished building and are on to demolition, jumping up and down.

"Romana!" She bounds over to them.

"Jack's finished. Take that grin off your face, young lady. I would have both of you cleaning it up if we weren't coming here. Next time you or Jack want a food fight, tell me and I'll drop you off on Clownworld."

"He started…"

"I don't want to hear another word about it!"

xxx

"So where do you want to go?" The Doctor leaps round the console and trips over a discarded mop.

Jackie looks thoughtful. "Somewhere pretty."

"Somewhere cold," Romana adds wistfully.

Jack opens his mouth. The Doctor shoots him a look.

"They already built a galaxy of planets like that, Jack. Take a holiday there if you want, but not my daughter," Jack shuts his mouth.

"I know!" He sets the co-ordinates. "Woman Wept, Tardis can choose the time. Doesn't really matter anyway. It's uninhabited, so it doesn't change much. Better wrap up warm!"

They meet back in the console room. Jackie is wearing a red coat with white fur trim round the hood. The Doctor firmly dismisses all Father Christmas jokes that spring to mind. Jack is sporting a black fleece with black gloves, making for an all black outfit.

"Not going for camouflage, then?"

"You said it was uninhabited."

"It is. Or at least, there are no indigenous populations. Might be the centre of an evil alien plot though."

"It's not though, is it?" asks Jackie nervously.

"Not as far as I know."

She looks unconvinced.

"Jackie, do you really think I'd deliberately throw you in front of hostile aliens?"

She knows it was the dearest wish of his ninth incarnation and says so.

"I'm not him! I thought I'd convinced everyone of that ages ago." Jack and Jackie exchange a look.

"Fine, do you really think I would deliberately put Romana in the way of hostile aliens?" His gaze falls on her, keeping warm in a chunky, if lumpy deep purple jumper knitted by Jackie, rainbow gloves and…

"Romana! If I ever see Four again…" The dark threat trails off as he tries to think of a scarf destruction method that will make up for the past three years.

"You told me to wrap up warm," she pouts. She's really perfected it.

He sighs deeply. The Tardis settles. He bounds over to the doors and takes a peek outside.

"Ha! I did it! Come on then, ladies first."

xxx

It's really, really lovely. Beautiful, elegant, majestic. A vocabulary as large as any human adult's, spanning several languages. But she can't think of a word to describe it. There's probably a word that sums up exactly what she means in Gallifreyan. There usually is. It's a beautiful language. But for now, a picture will have to convey what words cannot. Capture the moment, then…well, ice slide. She's left her camera back in the Tardis though, round that corner. Not that far.

"I'm just heading back to the Tardis for a minute, ok?" She turns back.

"I hope you're getting rid of that scarf!" the Doctor shouts after her.

Oh, there it is. She thought it was further back. She pushes open the door and runs inside. The camera's in her room.

xxx

"Are you sure there's nothing on this planet, Doctor?"

"Apart from us?"

"Apart from us."

"We are the only sentient beings on this planet."

"So Romana can't have got into any trouble, then?"

"She's as jeopardy-friendly as her mother- but there is nobody else here."

"It's just that she's been gone ages."

"Oh, she probably just got lost in the Tardis," Jack offers.

"The Tardis would make sure she didn't."

"Maybe she got sidetracked." They're all getting slightly worried.

"I'll go look." The Doctor stands, shrugging on his coat.

"I'm coming with you." The Doctor has learned not to stand in the way of a Tyler female.

"Should I go the other way?"

"No, you stay here, Jack. In case she comes back."

The Doctor strides off, Jackie hurrying by his side.

xxx

"Romana?" The Doctor tramps along the beach. "Romana?"

Jackie's too breathless with trying to keep up to call out. Which isn't good, because it leaves her mind free. She doesn't like that look on his face. A fragile mask for the dark side of his ancient soul. A look that tells of the horrors he's seen. If anyone has harmed Romana, there isn't going to be enough for a matchbox once the Doctor, Jack and she have finished. Suddenly the Doctor freezes as unearthly groans fill the air. She'd recognise that sound anywhere.

The Doctor grabs her and they throw themselves round the corner, just in time to see the Tardis fade away.

A/N: Yes, very short chapter I know. Sorry! I just had to have that cliffy. Please review!


	9. Chapter Eight

Disclaimer: For a short period, I owned Doctor Who. Then I woke up.

The Doctor drops to his knees, running a hand over the imprint left in the sand by the Tardis. "No," he whispers, "No." Trying to stop his thoughts dead with a simple negative, wanting to hide behind a wall of disbelief. But his brain has already analysed and delivered the possible scenarios.

_1) Romana has somehow activated Emergency Program One and will land in the Powell Estate in the 21st century. She will probably try to hide in the Tardis. Otherwise, she will probably be taken into care as an abandonee. They will probably discover she's not human and…do something awful. That is if UNIT or Torchwood don't hunt her down. And we're stuck here for the rest of our lives, which won't be long as there is no food or water._

_2) Due to an accident, the Tardis has simply slipped into the Vortex. It will either land somewhere, where she can hopefully survive, or keep travelling through the Vortex until it runs out of energy and falls into the Void. And we're stuck here for the rest of our lives, which won't be long as there is no food or water._

_Hope for Romana- slim. Hope for us- unless a ship lands soon, non-existent. Hope of our reunion- minimal, depending on Emergency Program One, our survival and speedy arrival. _And a small part of his brain recognises the bitter irony. _The Last Time Lord- with his family scattered all over Time._

There are footsteps, running, behind him. Jack. Must have heard the Tardis and thought they'd abandoned him again. Jackie stops him. They don't approach him; they stand behind him silently, respectfully. And he wants to scream at them. _You're the only family I've got left and you don't want to come near me!_ But he doesn't because he knows it isn't like that. But he's lonely anyway. Until Jackie gives a stifled gasp and jumps in the air.

"Doctor. Doctor!"

He turns around. "Yes, Jackie?" When did his voice begin to sound like that? A cynical, tired old man.

"I think, I think…" She stands on tiptoes and cranes her neck. "It is! Doctor, it's the Tardis! Just round the corner!"

They rush round the corner. Jack stops dead.

"Hang on…if this is the Tardis, what disappeared?"

The Doctor lays a hand against the blue wood. "It seems real enough."

"Could it just have jumped a few metres?" Jackie suggests.

"No, we'd have heard it."

"Then what…" Jackie trails off as the Doctor freezes.

"Me." The whisper is so quiet they have to strain to hear him.

"What do…"

"Think about it! We arrive, park here and go off this way." He flings an arm out. "Then the other arrives, parks over there, and goes off that way." He waves in the opposite direction. "Then Romana comes back and runs into a Tardis…" He breaks off.

"Jack, you've seen paradoxes, right?"

"Saw the same girl meet."

"What happened?" Jackie's curious.

"Explosion. Wiped them both from history."

"It's sort of the same thing. Jackie, if someone came up to you, just after you met Pete Tyler, and told you that you would marry him and have a daughter called Rose, do you think that would affect your relationship with him?"

She stares at him bemusedly. "Um…maybe?"

Jack's impatient. "What are you talking about?"

"Romana is inside the Tardis…"

"So what's the problem?"

The Doctor ignores the interruption. He has to make them understand how serious this is. He continues, speaking slowly and clearly.

"Romana is inside the Tardis with my ninth self and Rose."

Jack and Jackie stare at him. Jackie breaks the silence.

"Why you and Rose?"

"Firstly, because most Time Lords stayed firmly on Gallifrey. I was a renegade, wandering about the universe. Secondly, I doubt any other chameleon circuits stuck the Tardis in the shape of a 1960's police box. The Time Lords never did understand my preference for Earth. So it has to be me." He can see about a thousand questions approaching and holds up his hand to forestall them. It would have to be another time; he needs them to understand the situation.

"The Tardis changes. White plastic, dark wood. The point is that it's only looked like it does now for my ninth and tenth. And Romana would notice if she went running into a Tardis that looked so different. And I have only visited Woman Wept twice in that time. Now and once with Rose."

After a lengthy pause, "So Romana is wandering round the Tardis and if she is discovered by you or Rose, there will be disaster."

"Yes."

xxx

Romana is lost. Completely, totally, utterly lost. She came in, headed for her bedroom and it wasn't there. And the Tardis wouldn't listen to her. So she decided to look for it. That must have been about half an hour ago. Now she's wandering past rooms she's never seen before. She hopes she can find a kitchen soon, otherwise she might starve to death before the Tardis gets tired of this. She kicks at a wall, hops down another corridor and finds a door she recognises. A door with a flower stuck on it. A Rose. She could spend some time going through those interesting boxes. She pushes at the door and stares. This is not the same room. Gone is the dust, the boxes piled on and around the bed. This room is lived in. It looks quite a bit like hers: alien oddments, photo frames. She crosses the room to look at one. The ninth Doctor, Rose, Jack and Mickey grin out of the frame. Nearly ten years on, it's a bit surreal. _All that has happened since…_ She's not sure what part of her mind said that.

She's jerked from her musings by the floor under her feet shifting. The Tardis is in flight. And footsteps are approaching. She scrambles under the bed. She's not sure why, she's got a perfect right to be here.

She has to smother a gasp as someone walks in. _This is not our Tardis._ Talk about stating the obvious. Why can't she have nice, quiet thoughts that don't consider themselves a separate entity? It's clear something's gone wrong. She peeks out as Rose peers into the mirror. This is not even Rose her mother. This is a younger Rose, clad in denim, applying mascara to her already spiky eyelashes.

"Rose!" She's heard that voice before, just once. When she fiddled with the Doctor's sonic screwdriver and activated something the hologram called Emergency Program One. It led to an unplanned visit to Jackie. The only time she hadn't been pleased to see her gran, because then she had had them both shouting at her for being "ridiculously stupid" for touching it. Did she have "no idea of how dangerous it was"? Apparently, she was "incredibly lucky" that it hadn't "blown her head off"! She'd give anything to be there again.

"Rose, it's your turn to cook." A pair of black clad legs appear in her narrow field of vision.

"I did it yesterday!"

"Yes, and it was very nice. That's why it's your turn tonight."

"Do I have a choice?"

"Yes."

"Hmm?"

"Cook or starve."

There is an mock outraged sound, followed by the sound of somebody beating their hands against leather.

"Do I take it that's a starve, then?"

Rose leaves the room huffily. The Doctor follows. And Romana is left alone.

xxx

"Well, you don't remember meeting Romana, do you?"

"No. And that makes it worse. If this was supposed to happen, I would remember it."

The Doctor droops over his mug of tea.

"Or it might mean that she manages to evade you and Rose." Jackie offers hopefully.

"The thing you're missing, Doctor, is that we have an advantage. We know what's supposed to happen next. Where did you go after Woman Wept?"

"After Woman Wept, we went…we went…" He stared in the rapidly cooling tea like a crystal ball. _Be careful what you wish for_. He shot upright. "We went to 1987." Jack and Jackie stared at him, comprehension dawning slowly on Jackie's face.

xxx

"Reapers, paradoxes, the lot! Enough to put centuries on a man. It was bad enough the first time. This time, you've got someone alive when he shouldn't be, two Roses, and a girl who isn't going to be born for another 27 years who might meet her young grandparents, one who shouldn't be alive and her mother, who's younger than her, and her parents, who aren't her parents yet, who shouldn't be there!"

"I don't remember anything."

"Of course you don't, Jackie! That's because last time the wound was healed." The Doctor leans against the console for support. "Paradoxes make my head hurt."

"Add in another Jackie, another Doctor and another Tardis…phew." Jack whistles.

"Not to mention you, Jack. We're supposed to meet you in 1941 soon after."

"Can't we just, sort of, go there, wait for them to arrive then go and get Romana out of their Tardis?"

"That would require precision timing, and besides…oh God."

"What could make this even worse than it already is?"

"The Tardis is thrown out of the time wound. If Romana's in there, I don't know what would happen. Yet, outside the Tardis, there's a paradox around every corner."

A/N: If you have reviewed, thank you. Thank you so much. If not, then I really would appreciate it. Hint hint


	10. Chapter Nine

Disclaimer: I still do not own Doctor Who.

The Tardis is still not listening to her. Obviously doesn't recognise her. She's been wandering the corridors for hours, dozing in an abandoned room for a few minutes at a time. They landed and went off again, and she was wandering the corridors. She doesn't know where the others are, but as these corridors have a layer of dust a centimetre thick on the floor, she doesn't think there's much chance of her being discovered. Hopefully, the Doctor won't come down this corridor until he's passed her point in his timeline. Otherwise, he might find small footprints a bit puzzling. They've landed again. Now would be a great time for the Tardis to stick the console room in front of her. She takes a hopeful step forward. The corridor stretches in front of her, endless and deserted.

xxx

The Doctor's hunched over a book in the library, but last time she asked, it hadn't been more help than "paradoxes are bad." Jack's in the kitchen, cooking a dinner that nobody will eat, so she's been left to her own devices. She comes up against a door marked with a rose. Rose's old room. She pushes the door open and sees all the boxes. Didn't Rose keep a diary? Maybe that will help. She knows Rose won't mind, if she ever finds out.

The Doctor has passed discouraged and is rapidly heading towards fatalism when Jackie bursts in, waving something in one hand.

"Hello, Jackie."

She waves the object at him, breathless.

"What's that? A photo?" He crosses over to her and she shoves it in his hand. It's the picture of his ninth self, Rose, Jack and Mickey in Cardiff just before they met Margaret Blaine, Mayor of Cardiff, otherwise known as Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen. Jackie stabs a finger at the left hand side. "No, it's not quite centred, is it?"

Having regained some of her breath, Jackie is able to gasp "Who…took the…photo?"

"You know, I have no idea. JACK!" The summoned appears in the doorway.

"What? You've found something?"

"Jackie has. Who took this photo?"

"A woman. She just came up, offered, aimed her camera, handed us the photo and disappeared again."

"And what," the Doctor is surprised to find that his voice has become high, "did this woman look like?"

"Um…she had long red hair…um…"

The Doctor interrupts. "When you say red hair, do you mean _red_ or do you mean coppery, orangey, gingery?"

"Orange. Why?"

They are interrupted by Jackie, now fully recovered. "No, this is the important bit!" She's stabbing a finger at the picture again. "In the background, just past you, Doctor."

He slips his glasses on as Jack squints at the picture. "What the…" He takes the picture. What he sees hits him like a ton of bricks, but the force behind this bricks is the almost painful sudden hope. He thinks his hearts might burst with it. A small figure… no, two small figures, but clutching each other so tightly. He's kneeling down to her height, her scarf draped over his back.

"That's why she took the photo. Not for them," he indicates the foursome, "but for them!" He points at the two figures in the background. "Ha!"

"Who…" Jackie's question is lost to posterity as the Doctor grabs her, picks her up and swings her round as if she weighed no more than Romana, then, putting her back on her feet, presses a kiss to her forehead before rushing off to the console room, still holding the photo.

Jack smirks as Jackie staggers slightly and moves to steady her. She blinks at him.

"Oh, um, thanks. What was that?"

"That was the Doctor. He must have gone mad with gratitude." He stops smirking when she slaps him.

xxx

They take off again and land very quickly; they can't have travelled far.

She steps into a much more used looking corridor and has just spotted the console room at the end when the Tardis gives an almighty shriek and lurches violently. An alarm sounds violently and lights flash all over the console. _The Cloister Bell. That is not good._ She spins round to see if anyone has spotted her, but the corridor is deserted. The Tardis screams again and jerks so violently that she's knocked to the floor.

The Tardis is spinning, the corridor is blurring, the walls are twisting and warping: grey, white, dark, yellow. The air is full of voices, of remarks made centuries ago, and Romana is being flung from floor to ceiling to wall. She screams, but it's drowned in the babble of the Tardis' past.

A door stretches upwards from the floor, a door decorated with a rose. She throws herself through it, the door stretching around her. It doesn't help. Images flash in front of her eyes; the Doctor, Rose, Jack, Rose, the Doctor, a woman with orange hair and blue eyes. _I know her!_ The images slow slightly, but now she doesn't recognise them. A lady with thick dark hair, a small boy with sandy brown hair doing nothing to hide disproportionately large ears, a woman with the same light brown hair and big brown eyes…_I know those eyes._ She squeezes her identical eyes tightly shut. Their voices rise above the babble: _"Earth Colony 2794…someone…Lydia from the library…Mayblossom, 623,999...you are a beautiful living person…"_ Her head hurts, her head hurts so much. It's bursting with thoughts and feelings alien to her and she screams to drown them out.

She doesn't know how long she screams for, as she tumbles from side to side. It seems a long time; she eventually runs out of breath. She's just drawing another breath when she notices all the voices die away. Her mind aches, but it's a dull, ignorable ache, not like the head-splitting pain of having her mind stretched to bursting point. And her body aches too, from hitting a hard surface at high speed over and over. She lies still on the floor for some time before gingerly gets to her feet. The Tardis is still rocking, but comparatively gently, with only occasional jolts. The room's intact. Not an oddment out of place. She staggers slightly and falls against a chest of drawers. She's twisted her ankle. At least she hopes that's all it is. The impact causes a photo frame to fall forwards. Honestly, the room's been spinning like the drum of a washing machine, except going every which way, and it falls over when she knocks against the chest of drawers. She reaches out and picks it up. That picture of the Doctor, Rose, Jack and Mickey. She looks at the surroundings. Cardiff. She likes Cardiff. With Mickey there, that must be just before they meet Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen again. _That can't be right._ Jack's not on the Tardis yet. She hasn't heard him, heard of him or seen any traces of his presence. So how can there be a picture with him in it? She studies the photo closely. Nothing appears odd, but the simple fact is that this photo shows the future of time travellers. She'd say it was impossible, except she's holding it. Then again, she's the future for the same time travellers, and she's here.

The realisation strikes her: _This Doctor has just days to live _and she examines his image closely. She's not sure what she's looking for, some harbinger of doom perhaps, some trace of the Doctor he will become. Ever since he explained the concept of regeneration, she's been curious about his other selves. She's seen pictures, she knows her scarf, or an identical twin, was worn by his fourth and he's described himself as best as he could (and always finished with "I'm the best yet") but she wonders what they were like as people, how different they were to what she knows. Sometimes she mourns the fact that he's already on his tenth. So much that she will never know. It's sometimes hard for her to accept the idea that she's such a recent development. Five years out of nearly a millennium. It's also hard to believe that she could achieve such a lifespan. Invariably when she follows this train of thought, she wanders onto one of two topics. Either idle speculation on regeneration and what she might look like in the future, or a painful realization; that that thought must have haunted her mother: The Doctor had had such a long life before her, and he would still live when she was long gone. She was part of his life for less than a tenth of the span. And her children would not only outlive her, but outlive her by centuries, perhaps millennia.

Her gaze drifts past the Doctor and focuses suddenly. She knows that coat. And the scarf draped over the back. She's barely visible, a dark blob enveloped by a lighter coloured blob. She reaches out with her hand and her fingers encounter cold glass. The figures stay motionless. _Cardiff. I'll find him in Cardiff._ In the meantime…she opens the now solid door and discovers the console room just outside. The column's going up and down very very slowly. Slower than she's ever seen it before, slow and steady. Up…down…up….down…it's almost hypnotising. She's rudely awakened by a screech from outside, and a shock rippling through the Tardis. Whatever anchor they'd found has been broken, and she goes falling into the shadowy depths of the ceiling. Not even the Doctor knows, or remembers, what's up, or down, here.

xxx

"So what, we go to Cardiff and hang around waiting for them to turn up?"

The Doctor looks up from the controls and flashes her a manic grin. "Yep!"

Jack whimpers slightly as he nurses his scarlet cheek.

"I didn't hit you that hard!"

"Oh, have you been the recipient of a Tyler slap?"

Jack nods. He really doesn't like the idea of talking as that will require stretching his cheek.

"Trust me." The Doctor turns back to Jackie. "Those slaps are famous across time and space. You're a legend in your own lifetime…well, before and after as well. I know of at least two invasions that were called off because of you."

She doesn't know whether to be flattered or demonstrate.

"And Jack, for future reference, Romana is also a Tyler. And she really doesn't appreciate being called Ro-Ro."

"She didn't mind!"

The Doctor raises a cynical eyebrow.

"No, maybe it wasn't the Ro-Ro, maybe it was the bit afterwards."

"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream…"

The Doctor hastily interrupts. "Yes, that. Where did you learn it, anyway? I notice your cheek is miraculously better."

"Jack, if you want to call her Ro-Ro again, I recommend you wear a full suit of armour."

The Doctor raises an admiring eyebrow. "Couldn't have put it better myself, Jackie."

"So, we go to Cardiff. What happens to Romana?"

"Well, we hang around in the vortex for a week or so because Rose is very upset because she thinks she caused the end of the world, and killed me and her dad. Then we go to Killindy. Then we spot something mauve and dangerous and chase it down to 1940's London. Then we pick Jack up. Then we go to Lakghiet, and Jack proves he's bigger on the inside. Then we go to that planet where people went fantasy crazy. Then we decide to go to Kegron Pluva, but get sidetracked. Then we drift through the vortex for a couple of days before Jack answers a distress signal, and morally obliges us to help them. Then we stop off at Cardiff to refuel."

Jackie is, to say the least, slightly surprised. "And while we wait at Cardiff, and you hop around, Romana is hiding."

"Um, yes, I suppose so."

"Can't we just go and pick her up earlier?"

"No. No, there's got to be a reason why we can't meet till Cardiff. And if we pick her up earlier, then this photo will suddenly be the focus of any number of time paradoxes. And it was taken by that woman to give us a message. And…I trust her."

Both Jack and Jackie are staring at him incredulously.

"All she's ever done is help us! Saved my life, saved Romana from slavery, sent us this message…I don't know who she is, but she's told us Cardiff, so we're going to Cardiff."

Jack and Jackie are beyond mystified.

xxx

She's been falling for some time, and at what seems quite a speed, but she can't tell. The surroundings don't tell her anything. The lost reaches of the Tardis are not exactly interesting; just plain, ordinary walls. Or as plain and ordinary as walls can be when they're distorting around her. She supposes they're changing colour, but everything looks grey and shadowy. She is flung against the wall as the Tardis suddenly snaps back into position and manages to grab hold of a useful protrusion. It stays there. The walls don't move. And down is now most definitely the way she came from. _Fantastic_. She's stuck, and her hands are getting sweaty, and the pole is cutting into her hands. This is most definitely not the best position to get stuck in. Her arms are already aching from being above her head, and her feet are slipping down the wall. There's a ledge further down, to the right, but it's too far to jump, she'd probably miss it. There's another pole directly below, but it's too narrow to drop down to. _Ho hum._

_What if-_ She carefully removes a hand from the pole and begins to unwind her scarf. Throwing one end over the pole, she tugs gently. Hopefully, it'll be strong enough. Taking a deep breath, she lets go of the pole and, a scarf end in each hand, abseils down the wall till she's level with the other pole. Her rational, logical mind is shrieking about madcap, stupid ideas, but if she listened to it, she'd just cling to the pole till she couldn't. So she proceeds with her madcap, stupid idea that could just save her life; grasping the pole with one hand and pulling the scarf down with the other, slinging the scarf over the pole and abseiling down from it till she could go no further. Taking a deep breath, and telling her hysterical mind to shut up, she kicks away from the wall and begins to swing back and forth. _One, two, three…_ And on the highest point of her swing, she lets go of the scarf with one hand and throws herself forward. She collides with something and hastily snatches a handhold. When she's convinced she's not falling to a rather premature death, she opens her eyes. And shuts them. And opens them again and laughs so much she's in danger of falling off. She went flying past the ledge and collided with the wall. Lucky the wall has a ladder attached. She doesn't know how far down it goes, but for now….And after wrapping her scarf back round her neck, she starts down.

She can see the console room below her now. It seems like it has taken hours, an endless cycle of hand down, foot down, hand down, foot down…Laughter floats up and she freezes. There's a knocking on the Tardis doors.

"Who the hell are you?" _Jack?_

There's a reply from outside.

"Captain Jack Harkness. Whatever you're selling, we're not buying."

"Out of the way!"

_It seemed a long time. But not a few weeks. I'm not even hungry!_

"Don't tell me, this must be Mickey!"

_Mickey. So they must be in-_

"So what are you doing in Cardiff? And who's the hell's Jumping Jack Flash?"

She hooks an arm through the bars and risks a look down.

There are two dark heads and a blonde head by the console. Directly below her, a dark head with a red flashing light attached. _Don't look up, don't look up._ She breathes a sigh of relief as he descends to stand beside his two companions and has to stifle a giggle as they show off to Mickey. She watches them go with a certain sadness. In a few days, the unbeatable team will be parted forever. But now she has to move quickly, taking the scarf off and bridging the gap between the end of her ladder and the ladder the Doctor had been standing on. She moves towards the door and is just about to open it quietly when she hears voices from outside. "There's no police boxes any more, doesn't it get noticed?" _That would have been fantastic. Get to Cardiff safely then just walk out of the Tardis into the middle of them._ She hears them move away and risks opening the door a crack. They're walking off, the Doctor's words float back "…safest place in the universe." She's not thinking about them anymore; she's just seen a flash of brown in the corner of her eye.

xxx

In front of them, the four have stopped as a woman with coppery, orangey, gingery hair takes a photo. Rose will take the photo she hands them; it will fall out of her pocket when they walk on, and be thrown away by a council street cleaner. The woman will put another copy on the Tardis, as it stands in a corner of Satellite Five, in the year 200,000. Nobody will notice it until they land in medieval Japan, and then Rose will assume either the Doctor or Jack bought a frame and put it in her room. She'll forget to mention it till she forgets all about it. But the Doctor and Romana neither know nor care as they cling together, so tightly it seems each is afraid that the other will vanish. Even Gallifreyan doesn't have the words. The beat of the other's double hearts says it all.

A/N: This story is still not finished! But reviews make me happy.


	11. Chapter Ten

Disclaimer: If I did own Doctor Who, it wouldn't be nearly as good.

A/N: Sorry for the delay in updating. I really have no excuse.

Rose shifts slightly. The bed is warm and comfortable and she can feel the Doctor's double heartbeat against her back. Smiling, she turns over and opens her eyes to the sleeping face of her son. She tries to crush her disappointment. Every day, it's the same. She puts him to bed and wakes up to find him in her bed. It started just a couple of weeks ago, but she is already tiring of it. When he wakes up, she is going to have to talk to him. Although she knows that he just has to look at her with those bright blue eyes and her strictness will melt. She swings her legs out of bed. She'll put the breakfast on, then they can go to the waterfall.

xxx

"Rose!" Lydia waves from the centre of the lake. The waterfall is a central part of the community; it provides electricity, drinking water and bathing water. In return, they make sure that any products, such as shampoo or soap, will not have a detrimental effect on the ecosystem before releasing them into the environment.

A group of small children shriek from the other side of the pool.

"Alright but I want you washing, not just messing around." He nods eagerly and jumps in to join his friends.

Rose enters more sedately and makes her way across to Lydia.

"Is that a new costume?" She indicates the dark red bikini.

"My old skirt, reincarnated."

They both laugh. It's only a short-term solution, but the technology in everyone's old clothes makes the material resistant to nearly everything, allowing it to be reused over and over and over… The laugh turns into bubbles, then splutters as someone swimming underneath knocks their legs from under them.

"Yuck. They might be totally natural, organic and eco-friendly but that stuff tastes disgusting." Rose scrapes her teeth along her tongue and firmly suppresses similar memories.

Lydia looks at her questioningly and pushes her thick mass of sodden hair away from her ears.

"Sorry. Didn't hear that."

"Just saying that they taste disgusting."

"Try closing your mouth next time."

"I didn't exactly have much warning!" Rose tries to act indignant.

Lydia looks at her and raises an eyebrow. "It was your son."

Rose is indignant. "What!"

"Who else could stay under water for five minutes?"

"Right, when I find him, I am going to teach him a lesson!" Rose manages to fume for half a minute before catching Lydia's eye.

xxx

Swish, splat, swish, splat, swish, splat.

"Stop!"

Matthew looks up at his mother enquiringly.

"It's driving me crazy, tip out your shoes."

He obediently removes his shoes and tips the water out.

Splat, splat, splat, splat.

Rose sighs and decides to ignore it.

"For the record, knocking Lydia and me over is not funny. And you're not going to do it again."

"How do you know it was me?"

"So it was you?"

"I didn't say that."

They bicker playfully all the way home and Rose forgets to bring up the subject of swapping beds.

xxx

"Rose. Rose!"

"Down by Unreadables."

Lydia appears at the end of the aisle, holding a large book.

"I found this. It's absolutely ancient, I have no idea how it survived. It was published in the early 21st century."

"What year?"

Lydia checks. "2008."

Rose smiles and sings. "It was a very good year."

"I've heard that song! It was a rare privilege to use the CD player."

"It was a very good year to love and be loved, I was happy."

"It didn't go like that though."

"No. No, it didn't," Rose turns away.

She allows her a minute of grief. "Rose, I think this is important."

Rose takes the book. A small, cheaply produced book, plain brown cover with small black writing. She squints at it and manages to make out the title. Woven throughout History. _I've heard that before._ Opening the cover, she finds an inscription that slams into her stomach. _For Clive, devoted husband and father. And for Mickey Smith, who continued the work until we were ready._ She skips the introduction, reads the first page, detailing the disappearance of two schoolteachers, flicks quickly through the book and slows as she reaches the end. The newspaper article about her disappearance. Charles Dickens, with the Doctor and Rose in the background. Jackie and Pete's wedding photo, with pink and black lurking at the back. They had been trying to leave inconspicuously, before anyone noticed they weren't supposed to be there, when they were hustled into this group photo. The article about her father's death, asking for the young blond girl who had sat with Pete to come forward to be thanked. A newspaper article about the disappearance of the Lord Mayor, last seen leaving the Town Hall with four strangers, and it gave their descriptions. She flicks over a few pages till she came to the end of the section. The dividing page was plain brown, with black writing that said Section Ten. _How did they get the order right?_ She quickly turns the page before she can stop herself. An extract of Queen Victoria's journal or diary or something. _I will not speak of the events at Torchwood Estate, just to say that a Doctor James McCrimmon and a feral child, Rose Tyler, were involved and after honouring them, I banished them from the Empire. I know not who they were or where they came from, but it was clear they consort with the darkest of things._ A newspaper article on the explosion at Deffry Vale High School. All staff and some children were missing. A translated extract of a French courtier's letter. _…these inhuman monsters seemed to want the head of Madame de Pompadour for some reason. She claimed to have seen their world, perhaps it was vengeance they wanted. The girl was very brave or stupid, these creatures had all number of implements extended towards her neck, and she told them that she did not fear them and that their nightmare would return to plague them. Then the sound of hoof beats were heard, and you may think me mad dear sister, but a man burst through a mirror on a horse, through solid wall…_ Rose can well remember that. The numbness, the absolute denial. She turns the page again. It is all there. Some record of every time they visited Earth's past. A picture of the Tardis standing in the estate, and the observation that it returned often. And a picture of them, strolling through the park hand in hand, with an observation that the successors seem to honour agreements made between the predecessors and companions.

"Are you alright? You look…strange."

"I think I'm going to be sick," Rose mutters faintly and collapses.

xxx

"No. You are not going to get out of that bed today."

"But really I'm fine. I just came over dizzy."

Lydia folds her arms.

"Fine, fine." Resigned, Rose flops back against the pillows.

"Now, why don't you tell what's wrong?"

"I said, I'm fine."

"Perfectly fine people don't faint at a book."

"It _hurt_ alright!"

There is a pause.

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it."

"It's just I try so hard not to think about it, because if I actually let myself realise…"

"It would hurt too much, the idea of never seeing him again. Did I ever tell you about…" she cuts herself off abruptly.

Rose is intrigued. "Who?"

Lydia just shakes her head then looks up, suddenly grinning.

"Tell you what. I'll tell you…"

"…if you can find out about mine."

"That's not fair! I have to tell you if I manage to discover who your someone is?"

"But you love a research mission."

"Oh, alright then," Lydia sighs.

"But you're not allowed to use that book!" she yells at her departing back.

Lydia turns back briefly. "Wouldn't worry about that. You're still holding it."

Rose is bemused to discover that she is. She opens it at random to find a frizzy-haired man with a stupid scarf wrapped round his neck staring at her from a crowd. She remembers that scarf; she was always tripping over it in the wardrobe. Even wound round the shoulders of an old coat, it still trailed on the floor. Her voracious complaining had sent him along to the wardrobe room once. But once was enough.

_She'd been looking all over the Tardis for him for ages. Her mobile told her it was two and a half hours. Amazingly, she found him where he said he would be, in the wardrobe room. She'd have looked there before, only she couldn't find it. The scene that met her eyes when she walked in was quite ridiculous. She was torn between amusement and exasperation. The coat was spread across the floor and he sat cross legged in the centre, chewing with a very solemn expression on his face, the scarf draped around him. The amusement won and she burst into giggles._

"_Rose!" He looked up delightedly and patted the coat next to him. She crossed and sat by him._

"_So what progress have you made?"_

"_I still like jelly babies."_

"_Ooh, is that what you're eating?"_

"_Do you want one?" He offered her the paper bag._

_She had just begun to chew when he said thoughtfully "It's amazing how these have lasted."_

_She stopped. "What do you mean? Doctor, how old are these?"_

_He mused. "Well, I think I bought them in 1973in a charming village."_

_Her mouth dropped open slightly._

"_But I think that that was about five hundred years ago in my timeline."_

_The slightly mangled jelly baby fell out of Rose's mouth._

"_You mean…" she eventually choked, "You mean that these jelly babies are half as old as you."_

"_Oi! I'm not a thousand yet. But about that."_

_Rose bolted from the room. He would suffer later. Now, she had an urgent appointment with toothpaste and mouthwash._

Rose smiles as she becomes aware of her surroundings. She has a good purpose for this book.

"Matthew!"

xxx

"Hey, hey." Matthew looks at his mother blearily. "If you're going to fall asleep, shift. You've got your own bed. And tonight, you are going to your own bed and you are going to stay in your own bed."

He looks up at her dolefully.

"You never had a problem before, why now?"

"Dreams."

"What dreams?"

"Strange dreams."

"Tell me."

"They're all disconnected. Just flashes of images."

"Like what?"

"There's this scarf…a frozen planet…someone in brown…tall grey buildings…I can't really remember much."

"Do they scare you?"

"Sometimes." _He's watching him walk out, and he doesn't know what he's going to do. He's so angry, it's not directed at him, but he's scared. For him. It's his fault, all his fault and he's fighting desperately to get to him; he's got to do something…_

"Matthew?" Rose is looking anxious.

"Sometimes they're happy." _The sun sparkles off the purple sand. He runs across it, slips on the slope and rolls down, shrieking with laughter, till he lands in the sea. The water is so salty, it sets his mouth on fire but he's still laughing…_

"Matthew!"

"What does salty seawater taste like?"

If Rose is bemused at the question, she doesn't show it. "Saltwater is tangy, sharp."

"I didn't know that."

"Why would you? You've never tasted it."

"But it was so vivid… I can't have dreamed the taste. You don't, do you?"

"In dreams, you can create situations, places, people. Sometimes you can taste things…but to dream accurately of something you've never experienced…"

"I'm scared."

"Don't be." She rocks him till she realises. He feels her stiffen.

"What is it?"

"Someone in brown…" she breathes, "Can you describe anyone you see?"

"He's…he's angry. Unbelievably angry. And…scared. I'm so scared because he's the most important…."

He tries to focus, but the details trickle away.

"Flashes of images?"

"No. That wasn't. That was a scene, a clip…it was a memory."

"Not yours."

"No."

The silence stretches out.

"I'm scared."

"Me too."

xxx

Adam cannons into Matthew and they both go flying.

"Foul!" yell ten small boys.

"Never!" ten small boys yell back.

Matthew appeals from the ground. "Come on refs, that was a yellow card!"

Rose and Lydia are deep in conference. Rose was shocked to discover that football had ceased to be played, the rules lost in time. So she reinstated it. Although without the offside rule.

"Um…" Rose quickly calculates.

"Throw-in!" Yes, so any 21st century human male would have a fit, but it's fun!

Adam pulls Matthew up. "Sorry about that, midget."

Any other time, he would have grinned and punched him playfully. But now, his eyes stare past Adam. Everyone turns to look.

"Hello?" He takes a step forward.

The girl stares at him. About his age, she is dressed in a baggy t-shirt, slipping down one shoulder, ragged threads hanging from the unevenly shortened bottom. Brown hair sticks out wildly around her head.

"Why are you dressed for bed? It's the middle of the day."

She just stares at him silently. It's slightly unnerving.

"Matthew? What are you doing? Who are you talking to?"

In front of his eyes, the girl vanishes. She just blinks out of existence.

"Reckon that fall must have done more damage than you thought, mate."

There's an arm round his shoulders, propelling him indoors.

"Match abandoned, boys. Matthew has a little sun-stroke. Don't worry, he'll be…"

Rose shuts the door on Lydia and the boys.

"Now tell me what happened."

A/N: Okay, this story only has a couple more chapters to go (although that is not a exact number.) I have the story worked out, I just need to write it down. However, unless I want to fail ALL my GCSE's, that won't be for a while. Hopefully, I'll be able to update by the end of next week.

But anyway, reviews are always appreciated. (Squee is a good word)

And can anyone tell me what a mary sue is?


	12. Chapter Eleven

A/N: I have just realised that I haven't been thanking everyone for the reviews! I am so sorry. So if you have reviewed at any point, thank you!

Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, I would be busy rewriting Doomsday. Instead I wrote this. And this is not making anyone any money.

The Doctor sighs. He would look at his watch, but it would be a pointless action as he's certain that he can't have been waiting for a year, much as it feels like it. He settles for tapping his foot and trying to whistle through his teeth. He'd just got the hang of it in his seventh regeneration when he regenerated. Never managed it since. Although he must admit this is a new experience for him. He's probably spent a few centuries of his life in some sort of cell, holding area, experimentation section whatever they call it; but then he was always formulating an escape attempt, his mind flinging out ideas. Unlike now. He stares blankly at the opposite wall, not really seeing it.

Why is Jack insisting that Romana tries on her top now? When Rose bought new clothes, she might take them out of the bag and hold them up but otherwise, he saw them when she wore them. And why buy Romana a top? This Tardis holds quite possibly the largest, most varied wardrobe in the universe. If this is what's going to happen, next time he needs to do vital work on the Tardis he'll simply lock them in their rooms. At least they didn't manage to find any trouble in mid nineties suburban England. He's not sure whether that surprises him.

"Ta-da!" Romana bounds into the room.

The Doctor takes one look at her.

"JACK!"

xxx

"So I dropped you off beside a cinema, and you decided to wander in the opposite direction and got lost."

"But then we found a church, and there were lots of girls there. A few years older than me. Wearing a brown and yellow uniform."

"You walked into a Brownie pack." The Doctor knows what's coming next.

"Their, what was it, Brown Owl? She was nice." Jack never misses a cue.

"And they were doing custom t-shirts! Jack did this one and I did this one." Romana lifts her top to reveal another with large blotches.

The Doctor eyes them cautiously. "I don't think tie-dying is a natural talent of yours, Romana."

"And then I did this one." Romana reveals another decorated with slightly wobbly Gallifreyan script.

"That's good. You're really improving. What does it say?" She rolls the tops up further and he scans it quickly. "I think you can rest assured that no-one else will have a top that proclaims their name in Gallifreyan."

"I don't know…I think you'd look good in it. Bright pink paint, of course," Jack grins.

The Doctor treats him to a "Not amused" look. Queen Victoria was famous for it, but he knows that rulers all over the universe wear the same look when banishing him from their empires. Even the ones that don't have faces. Not many people would believe that a flower could look unamused. There's probably a deep and meaningful reason behind such similarity the universe over. Possibly related to the meaning of life.

"How was it that Romana was able to complete two quite complex designs in the time it took you to paint two words?"

Jack simply smirks.

"And this one…"

"Three complex designs," the Doctor corrects himself.

"No, I didn't do this one."

"Two complex designs." Jack doesn't often get the chance to correct the Doctor.

"I did do three; I just didn't do this one."

"Three complex designs." The Doctor resists the urge to add 'so there.' Switching his attention back to Romana, he enquires "Where did you get that one then? And what happened to your third design?"

"Sarah gave it to me. We swapped."

He looks at the top. It's small and tight, quite unlike the other two or any shirt Romana likes to wear. There's a large pale pink heart in the centre with purple frills. The whole design has been liberally scattered with multi-coloured sequins and glitter.

He comments on this.

"Nothing compared to mine. I drew a landscape. Sun, sea…purple sparkling sand. I hope it doesn't all flake off." She pulls the layers of tops down and wanders over to the door.

"She was nice…I hope she has a good life." She has no idea what effect her simple statement will have.

xxx

The Doctor watches as Romana laughs with Jack. He smiles, but his thoughts are troubled. He had frequently moaned that it was like having two kids to look after, but now he thinks that's better than having Romana grow up too fast. All those girls would have been picked up by their family, taken back home, to a house, eaten dinner, gone to bed, woken up and carried on with their ordinary lives. A normal life. A stable life. Romana walked off with a renegade Time Agent from the 51st century and came back to her home, the last Tardis in the universe, to her father, the lonely god who destroyed his people. After a night cycle, she could be anywhere in time and space. Her family consists of said renegade Time Agent, said alien and her maternal grandmother. She has no friends her own age. She has no friends at all. He had such a lonely childhood, he grew up too quickly. He doesn't want that to happen to Romana.

xxx

A crowd of boys, standing around. Basic housing surrounding them. A boy steps toward her. He says something but she doesn't listen. She's trying to remember where she's seen him before.

"Why are you dressed for bed? It's the middle of the day."

He's not supposed to say that. People in dreams never comment on oddities. Everything makes sense in dreams, a sort of twisted logic. But this is not making sense.

There's a massive bang from the direction of the console room. She tumbles out of bed and runs.

xxx

"And he asked me why I was dressed for bed and said it was the middle of the day. I didn't say anything because I was trying to work out why I recognised him, but I remember that I thought it was odd that he said that. Then I woke up because you had rerouted the neutron flow to the secondary power source," she laughs up at him.

He smiles slightly at her choice of words. Anyone else would simply have said "I woke up because you caused an explosion." This dream has made his mind up, the idea that she dreamed of a large crowd of children, playing together.

But they still have a few hours till Jack will wake so he rises from the sofa and inserts another disc into the player. All the movies are stored, and he could just select one with the remote, but he likes to get up and stretch occasionally. He sits back down and Romana flops across his lap. He could tickle her mercilessly, or he could watch the film, which he now notices is Gifght Yjan Ukan, a Hahijanrain film which Romana won't understand. He tickles her mercilessly instead. She's ticklish in exactly the same places as Rose.

xxx

He waits until she goes to bed. Instead of performing some slightly-needed repairs, he sets a course. The Tardis groans reluctantly.

"Stop it. This is for the best."

The Tardis jerks a little more forcefully than usual.

"We're not abandoning you! We'll come back at weekends."

A shadow settled on his face as he contemplates the idea of a normal, nine to five, beans on toast life.

A creak rouses him from his dreary thoughts.

"Yes, I know! But it's the best thing to do. I don't want Romana growing up as I did."

The Tardis groans again.

"Yes, I know that the circumstances are completely different but…" He listens for a while. "I'll drop Jack off on a pleasure planet and pick him up after however long he wants."

A rasp echoes through the room.

"I know!" The Doctor drops into his chair, cradling his head in his hands.

xxx

Romana notices they're not drifting aimlessly as soon as she hops into the console room.

"Where are we going?"

The Doctor's standing by the console, his back to her. She misses his reply first time.

"London, 2014," he repeats.

"Are we going to see Nanny Jackie?"

She doesn't miss the slight stiffening of his back, or the pause before he replies.

"Yes."

"So where are we going? Do you think she'll like Ralady?"

"I'm sure she would."

Romana freezes and the Doctor quickly runs through fifty-five appropriate curses in his mind.

"What do you mean, would? We always go somewhere."

The realization makes her sick to her stomach.

"We're not going." She's breathing shallowly, while her mind shuts down in disbelief. How could he do this?

He turns to face her. "Romana, I…"

That tiny piece of her mind suddenly reconnects and she's throwing herself past him, wrenching every control she can see, anything to stop him dumping her.

The Tardis shrieks and lurches, throwing Romana head-first into the wall.

xxx

She opens her eyes and looks at a familiar white ceiling. The med-bay. She turns her head- it's actually quite painful- and finds the Doctor slumped in a chair next to her. He stirs.

"Romana, I…"

He doesn't get any further as she hurls all her weight against him. By the time he's picked himself off the floor, she's disappeared. She won't get far. He lays a hand against the wall and the Tardis makes a reassuring sound.

xxx

She stumbles along the corridor. She doesn't notice the way the corridors shift just before she enters them, the way she's guided in a circular path. She's blinded by tears. She doesn't even see the Doctor until she runs into him. She fights as desperately as she had when it was Jack that held her. But then she'd been fighting to get to him. Now she's fighting to get away.

She writhes and twists, kicking at his legs, flailing wildly towards his face. His grip on her shoulders doesn't loosen.

She stamps on his foot as hard as she can.

"I hate you!" she screams.

That hurts. That hurts a lot. He jerks a little as his hearts freeze and his stomach informs him of its opinion on evacuation. He feels what some might call his soul wither and his mind cries in distress. _No, please. Not her. Anything but that. Please, no._

The only outward sign is in the increase of the pressure of his fingers. Romana doesn't even notice. She's crumpled and is choking words out between her tears.

"You said…said…you _promised_ not…not to leave me."

He stares down at her blankly. Something inside him is screaming to hug her, comfort her, wipe away her tears and fix whatever he's done wrong but those three words hang threateningly in the air, a wall of pain-filled venom.

She looks up to find him gazing at her. His eyes are empty. She's seen them brimming with pain, burning with anger, bright with laughter. But now…there is no emotion there. None at all. It's the most terrifying thing in the whole universe.

She backs away slowly, his hands sliding limply from her shoulders. The horror is evident on her face. _He's gone. He's left me._

Only when she bumps into the corner does she turn her back and run as fast as she can away from the entity that used to be her father.

xxx

Jack is getting seriously annoyed. For over three weeks, they have drifted in the vortex and he's had approximately three minutes of conversation, catching Romana as she drifts through the corridors, or receiving monosyllabic sounds as he tries to talk to the Doctor's legs. Occasionally the Tardis lands them somewhere, or Jack tries to enter some coordinates, but to no avail. Romana simply barricades herself in her room and the Doctor disappears into the depths of the Tardis. Jack has tried to get Romana out, but she simply doesn't answer. He's tried to enjoy himself away from the stifling atmosphere, but the incident with the trees ends that. He'd bounced out of the Tardis but ended up wandering aimlessly, his mind totally preoccupied. He'd ended up kicking a tree in frustration, and they turned out not to be trees, and not very amused about being kicked. He'd had to run for his life back to the Tardis. On his own. When he dived through the doors, the Doctor had simply looked up before setting a course away and disappearing. There was no laughter, no smug Doctor giving a lecture on the trees, which of course would have a long unpronounceable name, no comments about Jack's charm being unappreciated. He doubts Romana even knew that he'd left the Tardis.

He knows there's something deeply wrong between the two of them. The atmosphere is similar to when the last Doctor and Rose had a massive falling out over something ridiculous. But that had been made up in a few hours. This is different; nastier and more prolonged. Romana stays in her room or drifts through the corridors like a wraith; her only colour in her red eyes. The Doctor spends his time under the console or somewhere in the depths of the Tardis; Jack hasn't seen his face since he bid the Doctor a good night and got the usual remark about stupid apes wasting their lives sleeping. Something happened that night. Jack hasn't seen them in the same room since. And if they won't make it up themselves, then he is going to do something about it. Even if he has to lock them together till they make up or starve. But maybe he should try again to find out what the problem is first.

xxx

A month and a half. Six weeks. And the rift is still as ugly as ever. About a week ago, Jack caught the Doctor in the kitchen, with a cup of tea that was almost congealing. He hadn't said anything or moved a muscle all the time Jack had been in there. Hadn't even given any indication that he was aware of Jack's presence. He'd tried to talk to the Doctor, tried to find out what the problem was, but had to give up. That was the last he'd seen of the Doctor.

The last time he'd seen Romana was two weeks ago. She had scared him. He's scared of what she is and what she isn't. Scared for her. The lively girl that bounced around so full of life is gone, replaced by this wisp of a child. She only speaks when she is pressed for a reply, and then her voice is distant and cold. The last thing she said to him was "Please leave me alone." So polite but so wrong. He often used to walk into her room; it doesn't have a lock. Then she'd throw herself at him and try to push him out until they collapsed from laughing. Or she'd do her best to bury him under a mound of pillows, blankets, clothes and soft toys and he'd throw them right back and sometimes the Doctor would appear in the doorway just in time to get hit by a missile that Jack had dodged and would end up joining in on one side or the other.

Jack sighs as he comes back from his memories. He'll give them another two weeks.

xxx

The two weeks is up. That makes it a total of two months. He doesn't understand why he doesn't just leave and let them get on with it. Or maybe he does and he just doesn't want to think about it. Rule One for a Time Agent: you don't get attached, you use people to your advantage, you always look out for yourself. He's the devastating charmer who's flirted and conned his way through time and space. He is most definitely not supposed to be thinking of these people as his family, wishing he had his own daughter. But the Time Agency dumped him minus two years of memories. Their rules and principles were chucked out a few hours after meeting an attractive blonde and her mysterious companion. He lost them once. Then he found his home again. And he is not going to walk away.

xxx

"I want to get to my room. Please let me through."

"No."

"I want to get past."

"Or what?"

"Excuse me."

Jack moves to block her path. Romana tries to walk past. He moves to block that side.

"Stop that."

"Why should I?"

They repeat the odd two-step.

"It's not funny." Her voice holds the slightest tinge of irritation.

"On the contrary, it's extremely funny." The same exchange that has been heard hundreds of times in the past year.

There! The slightest spark in her eye.

"If you don't mind, I need to go to my room."

"I do mind."

"You can be so annoying." Is he imagining that undercurrent of amusement?

"Really?"

"Yes."

"I'm wounded." Jack clutches at his chest.

"Can I go past now?"

"Um…let me think about it….no!" He grins down at her. She can attack him if she likes, he just needs to get some emotion out of her.

She moves so quickly it takes him some time to work out what hit him. She takes him by surprise, shoving him hard so he stumbles and falls backwards.

He looks so funny, sitting there with his legs splayed out and a slightly stunned expression on his face. A giggle rises in her throat and soon she has collapsed next to him, crying with laughter. It feels good to laugh again.

"You're back! Romana, you're all right!" She shrieks and squirms as she always has when tickled.

The Tardis settles.

"It appears we've landed somewhere. Care to join me?"

Romana jumps up.

"I've got to get to my room!"

Jack stares up at her. She adopts an outraged posture.

"I am not going out like this!" And she runs off down the corridor, giggling as she'd believed she'd forgotten.

xxx

She skids into the console room. Jack follows slightly more sedately and breathes a small sigh of relief when he sees the room is empty. Although Romana's been shaken out of her depression, he knows the problem hasn't been resolved.

"Wait a sec, I need to check where we are."

"But it's much more fun when you don't know!" With that she yanks the door open.

Her scream is hardly audible above the rush of the wind. It sweeps through her head, reawakening memories of a similar time as the time vortex swirls in front of her. Her mind is full of disconnected images, the same images she saw aboard the past Tardis. A lady with thick dark hair, a small boy with brown hair and bright blue eyes…_the boy from the dream._ She tries to cling to that image and the few phrases spoken with different voices: _Mayblossom, 623,999, Lydia from the library, Earth Colony…_She's swept past, catching the barest glimpse of Rose. _It is, it is, I've got her eyes. _As her mind is overwhelmed, she screams inaudibly for the person she trusts more than anything.

xxx

The Doctor takes the scene in at a glance. Jack is clinging to the console as the winds of time roar through the console room. Romana is standing in the doorway, strangely unaffected by the force that is threatening to blow Jack off his feet. If it wasn't for her screaming in his head, she would almost seem serene.

Jack stares at Romana. Her hair is falling around her shoulders and the scarf does not stir. Yet he can hardly stand against the buffeting winds. And just above her shoulder, the bright vortex beckons alluringly…

Jack jumps at the hand on his shoulder.

"Don't look at it," the Doctor mouths.

Jack nods his understanding and wrenches his wandering gaze away.

The Doctor approaches across the console room slowly. He's not completely unaffected, his hair is blown back and his eyes are watering. He's not sure whether that's the wind though.

Crouching beside her, he allows himself to look upon the splendour of time.

"Look out there, what do you see?" His voice is quiet, but perfectly audible. He can hear the wind, but it seems muffled and faraway.

She leans into him, her mind clearing, and he wraps an arm around her.

"Lots," she murmurs wonderingly. "It's so big. It's beautiful."

"That's the true inheritance of the Time Lords. That is what we were supposed to be," he pauses as they stare out. "The Time Lords lost sight of that. With power comes responsibility, but they were scared of that responsibility. Frightened to act in case they did the wrong thing. So scared of change," he unconsciously quotes. "I was the complete opposite. As if someone was trying to balance it out. The unevenness killed them. My recklessness started the war; their reluctance to act doomed them."

She twists in his arms to look at him. "Time has no lord or master, Time Lord."

A medley of emotions play across his face before he hugs her tightly and laughs against her hair.

"The High Council were pompous prats. You'd have done them the world of good. That is, if they didn't suffer double heart attacks at the idea of you. I…"

"Dadtor…"

He's missed the sound of that word.

"We're about to fall out of the Tardis."

He looks over the top of her head.

"That would not be good."

"Is that an understatement?"

"Have I ever understated anything?"

"Yes."

And together, they stand up, turn their backs on the vortex and close the doors.

I neglected to thank all the lovely reviewers. I am a horrible person who does not deserve any reviews. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want them.


	13. Chapter Twelve

A/N: I haven't updated in almost a month? I am so, so sorry for the delay in updating! It's everybody else's fault for writing such good fanfic so that I do lots of reading and hardly any writing…okay, I have absolutely no excuse.

This chapter is dedicated to **fugaziclash** for being the 100th reviewer.

Disclaimer: One word- Doomsday.

A scream rips the relative quiet of the Tardis apart.

Peeking out of a cupboard the Tardis has created expressly for the purpose, Romana admires her handiwork. Adding pink hair dye to Jack's shampoo is simple yet effective. And no less than he deserves after syrup-and-feathering her. It was very sticky. And the feathers were very itchy. He completely ruined the top from Jafeen. It had taken six hours to get clean, fifty-five different types of shampoo to clean her hair and the Doctor had got just as wet as her. That part had been quite fun. But not so much as to save Jack from her revenge. The pink brightens up the boring black-and-white outfit marvellously. At least in her opinion. She has a feeling Jack doesn't agree with her. She manages to suppress her laughter until Jack storms from the room, either heading to set up his retaliation or to the console room.

Two minutes later, the Tardis rocks with the Doctor's laughter. The console room then.

xxx

"Where are we going? Jack would fit right in on Pialn, don't you think?"

Jack scowls and the Doctor fights to keep his face neutral.

"We are going to 2014 to buy black hair dye."

Romana pouts. "All my hard work…do I have to come?"

The Doctor snorts in disbelief. "You think I'm going to leave you and Jack together? I like this design. I don't want to redecorate yet. You are coming with me, young lady. Jack, if you want to explore, go ahead, but if you're not back before us, we're leaving."

"That's just a fancy way of saying stay here."

"Yep! I really don't want to unleash you on unsuspecting 21st century London," the Doctor agrees cheerfully. "Of course, I'm sure Jackie would be delighted to have you hanging around for a few months."

Jack opens his mouth to protest but closes it as an idea strikes him.

"Jack?"

"Yep, you go ahead. I'll just hang around…" _Though not in the same way Romana will be later._

The Doctor eyes him suspiciously. Jack looks altogether too innocent. The Tardis interrupts by landing.

"Romana, take that _thing_ off and go and get some shoes."

"This_thing_ saved my life."

"Now."

xxx

"Don't touch anything."

Romana looks at him in surprise. It's not that she hasn't heard that before, just that usually that means they're in danger of incarceration/ loss of limb/ death.

"Honestly, some human chemicals are pure poison to our alien physiologies."

An old woman gives them a strange look and hurries past into the shop.

Romana giggles. "I think she heard you."

The Doctor doesn't laugh, instead pulling her away.

"What- I thought we were going in there."

"Some people are very paranoid about aliens. Earth hasn't had very good experiences with aliens so far. There's a Boots down the road, we'll go there."

"But we just walked past a Superdrug!"

"Never really trusted Superdrug after I stopped…Just trust me, I am not welcome in Superdrug."

They walk down the road in comfortable silence.

As they reach their destination, Romana, seized by a sudden suspicion, wanders down to the corner and seems to find something rather funny.

"What is it?"

"Does anything along there seem remotely familiar?"

The Doctor's gaze follows Romana's finger. A large blue box sits on the pavement some way down the road.

"We walked in a circle."

"Looks like it."

"Makes a nice change from running."

"That wasn't actually my fault, Jack…"

"No, it was my fault for letting Jack flirt unsupervised. Remind me to restrict him to one sentient species per planet. Better still, one gender."

"Better still, let him discover what pink hair signifies on Haynhi."

"We are going into Boots. We are going to buy black hair dye. We are going to take it back to the Tardis and give it to Jack. And we are going to do all that before I give in to that temptation."

"No fun."

xxx

Everything is ready. The rope lies in a large circle on the floor. Someone who walks through the door to Romana's room will have at least one foot in the circle when the opening of the door causes the massive book to fall, rapidly shrinking the circle to the size of the object inside and yanking it into the air. Jack has carefully calculated the length of the rope so that Romana will be just a little way above the floor, but high enough that she won't be able to reach the floor with her outstretched arms. Then she will be completely at his mercy. He hasn't decided what to do after that yet. Perhaps he will poke her repeatedly- from a safe distance, with a long stick. Perhaps he will spin her round; there's got to be a limit to her infuriating alien balance. Perhaps he will throw icy water over her, even though the cold doesn't bother her, he can still make her wet. Or perhaps slimy. With an evil smile, Jack sets out for the kitchens.

xxx

The Doctor stares in amazement. There is an entire shelf of black hair dye. Midnight black, blue black, dark black. Dark black? Surely their marketing department would save a lot of time if they just called it black. Wash-in, wash out, permanent, semi-permanent.

"Which one do you think?"

"I think…that one."

"That is not black hair dye."

"Well, green might suit him better." She wanders away.

The Doctor eventually decides on permanent midnight black. As long as it doesn't come with sparkly stars, it'll be alright. He doesn't want to have to repeat this just because the dye washes out before the pink grows out. Turning around, he discovers a distinct lack of Romana. He eventually finds her a couple of aisles down, in front of the makeup testers.

"The toilets are over there. Wash that off and meet me by the tills."

Romana glares. He's sure she would pout, but her lips are stuck together by a mixture of goops. He's pretty certain that not all of them were intended for application to the lips.

"And don't sulk or I'll tell Jack."

If looks could kill, he'd be frightening the other shoppers, who probably aren't used to men suddenly bursting into flames.

She stalks away. The Doctor ignores all the curious looks from the people who, if they had a five-year-old daughter, would take her to the bathroom and wipe all the gunk off her face themselves rather than sending her off on her own. What do they know about Romana? She's much more capable than that. And she wouldn't appreciate him not treating her as such.

He walks away to pay for Jack's hair dye.

xxx

There's a swish, a thud and a pained yell. Jack's out of his hiding place and racing towards his sprung trap before he can realise that not only did the thud of the book landing on the floor sound strange but that Romana screams rather than yells.

The unset jelly is thrown over the person attached to the rope before he registers who it actually is.

"Thanks for that, Jack. I was just thinking that here I was in a strange version of traction; my back in pain, having narrowly escaped breaking my neck: what I really needed was someone to throw something wet, slimy, lumpy and sticky over me." The Doctor gives Jack the best glare he can manage from his somewhat awkward position. The rope length had been carefully calculated for Romana's height. Due to the Doctor being somewhat taller, his leg has been hoisted into the air but his back is strangely angled to allow for the way his shoulders were about floor level.

"I thought you were Romana."

"I know we have a certain facial resemblance, but I had no idea she had suddenly grown a metre and taken to wearing pinstripe suits. Why hasn't she tripped this already?"

"She's been out with you."

"You mean, she's not been back?"

"I thought she was with you."

"She was. But I waited for ages. She wasn't in the toilets."

"You looked for her in a public toilet?"

"Yes, that was the logical thing to do."

"A ladies toilet?"

"Yes, so what? It was empty."

Jack's grin is replaced by a disappointed look.

"And we were just round the corner from the Tardis, so I thought she might have come back."

"No, I haven't seen her."

"Are you sure?"

"You know the first thing she does is run to her bedroom. Ask the Tardis."

The Doctor puts his hand against the floor.

"She hasn't seen her. Romana isn't in the Tardis."

The Doctor realises he's breathing quickly and tries to quell the rising panic.

"Are you sure she's not just standing there, waiting for you?"

"Jack, I waited for half an hour before I looked in the toilets. And then I searched the entire shop. Then I came back here."

"I'm sure she's fine…she's just disappeared...okay, she's probably not fine."

"You are a real comfort, Jack. Now get me down so I can do something."

"Something?"

"Anything!"

"No."

"What…"

"How are you going to look for her? You are not going to tear London apart."

The Doctor closes his eyes and forces his mind to work rationally.

"I can trace her Tardis key."

"You won't run off and get yourself killed or captured? Because, as I'm sure you know Doctor, she's probably been taken for what she is. Perhaps as a way to get to you."

The Doctor chooses not to answer. He's always known that Romana could be hurt to hurt him; there are things that would view her not as a child, but as his main weakness. He hates the fact but he knows it. Perhaps Rose and Matthew are lucky, away from him.

xxx

"Stick that into your device-thingy…"

Jack takes the chip.

"Stick it in my device-thingy? What happened to the technical language?"

"I need you to understand this."

"I think that was an insult." Jack nudges a bundle of wires apart and inserts the chip.

The Doctor peers over his shoulder.

"See, that big blob is the Tardis…"

"Big blob? You really have abandoned the technical language."

"If you miss it so much, I can use technical language. I can speak Gallifreyan and use technical language, then you'll have even less chance of understanding. So this _big_ _blob_," he stresses the words, "is the Tardis. We'll have markers as well, as long as we carry our keys, but they won't show up until we're away from the Tardis. And if we just widen the range…" He stretches over and twiddles a knob. The golden dot on the display shrinks as another gold dot appears on the edge. "There she is! Co-ordinates?"

Jack reads them off.

"And off we go!"

xxx

"Turn left and head straight up."

"Left?"

"Right."

The Doctor takes the right turning. Jack calls him back.

"You said right!"

"I meant right, go left!"

They take the left turning and proceed in silence although Jack is certain that the Doctor is mumbling something about stupid apes, always making things difficult for themselves. At least he's acting somewhat normally, for him. Jack's seen the Oncoming Storm before.

"Turn_right_ and…No, no!"

"What?"

"She's moving. Moving fast. Away from us."

The Doctor throws himself around the corner.

xxx

Romana makes her way to the back of the shop where the toilets are. Several ladies give the small girl, sitting on the edge of a sink so to be able to see into the mirror as she scrubs at her face, strange looks and she has to reassure more than one that she is perfectly fine. She uses up a tree-worth of paper towels, but she manages to remove all the goo from her face. However do human women stand it? She had been practically suffocating. Rubbing at her lips one more time to try to remove the lingering stickiness; she sees a shape behind her in the mirror. She hasn't time to do more than whip round to face it before there's something covering her nose and mouth. _This is really unfair._ It's her last conscious thought for a while.

xxx

She slowly drifts back to the waking world and immediately wishes she hadn't. There is a humanoid standing in front of her. Humanoid, but definitely not human. Its skin is a scaly grey and the eyes, slitted yellow eyes, are set too high on the face. Lifeless platinum blond hair lies neatly across the top of the head.

"How are you feeling, pretty?"

Dizzy and nauseous but don't show weakness. "What are you?"

"We are the Nivas." A pointy black tongue flicks out.

"Where are we?"

"An abandoned storage facility."

"What are you doing on Earth?" Keep them talking, give yourself time to analyse the situation, and perhaps find something useful out.

"We wish to take human brides to strengthen our blood."

"I'm afraid arranged marriages aren't popular on Earth anymore. So if you could just put me back in the shop, my…my mum will be worried, and…go away…"

"But little one, it took such a long time to find Earth. And we have finally reached our destination and found such a prize… A Time Lady. Your blood will make our race great again."

Romana's eyes widen. She should have seen this coming.

"Absolutely no chance!" She's up, he's down, she's past…Another three appear and block her path before picking her up easily and dumping her back in front of the first one, probably the leader. They disappear soundlessly, but now she knows they're there.

"Such a spirited little girl…" He reaches out and takes her by the chin. She stares defiantly back.

"It'll be broken. I do hope you aren't one of the strong and stubborn type. I don't want to hurt you more than necessary. Let's see." She can feel him worming his way into her mind. She has just enough time to hide anything about her family or the Tardis. The only trace is the memory of Jack's pink hair.

"Oh yes. You like playing jokes, a sizeable streak of mischief here. Mischief can so easily become malice. Yes, you will be broken. By the time you're broken, you should be old enough to bear my children. With Time Lord blood, our children will become undisputed leaders. My family will be all-powerful again."

"My dad isn't going to like this."

"Oh dear, I'm scared."

"You have no idea."

"You're right. I have no idea, so there's no point. Psychological warfare is not going to work."

"This isn't psychological warfare. This is truth."

"I grow tired of your prattling." He bends down and pokes her in the stomach. "Do you have anything useful to say?" Her suppressed nausea suddenly returns. She cheers silently and smiles sweetly at him.

"Just one thing."

"What?"

"Chloroform is so old-fashioned." She's promptly sick over him.

xxx

She sighs. If they're hoping to destroy her spirit with boredom, they are going to be severely disappointed. She picks up a brick and throws it at a sack. The spiralling dust motes are quite beautiful. She would try to call the Doctor, but that _thing_ inside her head seems to have blocked off the link. She just can't find it.

The thing enters the room.

"You don't believe in giving people a break, do you? You only chucked me in here five minutes ago. Can't you leave the spirit-crushing till we leave Earth?"

"No."

He's already scraping at the defences round her mind. She withdraws and curls into a defensive ball. The lightest brush… has she imagined it? No, there is a link. It feels slightly foreign, probably because she has lost it and found it again. She latches on and screams desperately.

xxx

In a place far away in both time and space, Matthew awakes screaming a name.

A/N: Remember when I said there should only be a few more chapters? Yeah, scrap that. Sorry, but I have been viciously attacked by a few dozen plot bunnies and I have decided to torture these characters for a bit longer. I do have the end all worked out, and I have even written the epilogue. I'm just…stretching the middle.

Anyway, thanks so much to everyone who has ever reviewed this story! I can't believe I've passed the one hundred mark!


	14. Chapter Thirteen

Disclaimer: Doctor Who is owned by a large corporation. I am one ordinary teenage girl. Draw your own conclusions.

"Dadtor! Dadtor! Dadtor!" The cries echo through the small cottage.

Rose is stumbling across the room before she even awakes. She sits on his bed and gathers him into her arms, faintly crooning a lullaby remembered from the memories she tries not to examine.

"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree…"

It's when she hears what he's sobbing that she freezes.

"Matthew?"

"I won't break, I won't! It hurts, help me."

"Matthew?"

She lifts his face to hers. It isn't her son in those eyes.

"Matthew!"

His eyes clear and fill with fear.

She rocks him for the rest of the night as he sobs uncontrollably.

xxx

"What can you remember?"

"Not much, it's, it's almost like I was…possessed."

Rose recalls Cassandra's possession of her body. Standing aside, a spectator.

"Was it one of those dreams?"

"No…no, but it was the same person."

"How do you know?"

"I don't know how. They just, sort of, feel the same. Sorry, that makes no sense. But they were hurt, desperate. They wanted…Sorry."

"Matthew? Matthew, how do they want?"

He wordlessly shakes his head.

"Matthew, there is something that gets inside your head. What does it want?"

He closes his eyes, concentrating. The word is there, floating just beyond the dividing line between him and something else.

"Dadtor. It wants him. The man in brown. The most important person in the whole universe." He follows the thought further. "He didn't like that. But she spent a week calling him Thay-" He mentally reels back as something hit him.

Rose's fingers are gripping him painfully tight. "Thay-"

"She hit me! She pushed me away."

Rose doesn't even seem to register the shift to a feminine entity. "Thay-"

"Rose! Rose!" Lydia bursts through the door.

"You look like you just ran clear across town."

"I…" Lydia gasps for breath, "I did."

"What's so earth-shatteringly wonderful slash terrible that you've run all the way here?"

"Don't you mean Mayblossom-shatteringly wonderful slash terrible?"

Rose rolls her eyes. "Who named this place?"

"I don't know. One of the original revolutionaries. The rest of us got given a choice: evacuate or be isolated."

"So what's so Mayblossom-shatteringly wonderful slash terrible?"

"I know!" She waves a sheaf of papers in the air. Rose remembers the past six months. Lydia has been barely sleeping, intent on discovering her someone.

"You know?"

"I know! I found out!"

"No, no, you weren't supposed to do that."

"Why did you challenge me then? You know I'm always determined to win."

"I don't know! A chemical imbalance caused by collapsing?"

Lydia raises an eyebrow. "Or perhaps it was a seemingly impossible task set to occupy my time and stop me asking? Because there are people who would be very interested in Matthew?"

Rose nods silently.

"Matthew. Listen, Rose. Matthew. He's a child. I know him for who he is, I'm not going to use him for what he is. I'm not going to use the knowledge of what you are, what you've done, what he is or who your someone is. And I won't let anyone else."

She runs from the cottage and Rose and Matthew follow.

Rose watches open-mouthed as Lydia carefully and thoroughly destroys all her research.

xxx

Her arm's close to being yanked out of its socket, but that doesn't mean she's actually going to stand up. Apart from the physical pain, it's quite satisfying to have to be dragged down the corridor. She's not going to make it easy for them. They tried to pick her up but she was too heavy. That might have had something to do with the bricks hidden under her top. In fact, moving her is doing her a favour. Room with bricks plus room with window equals escape. That's the best sum, but she quite likes brick plus Nivas leader equals Nivas leader with a large headache.

The door approaching looks ominous. She's learned to be wary of thick metal doors. Even if it's covered in rust.

He would throw her in if he could. He has to be content with dragging her in and stalking out.

"Aren't you staying? Have you given up?" He snarls and slams the door shut, not missing the pointed looks of his subordinates or the quiet "True love, eh?"

The room is just as old as the door. Cracked flaky bricks which crumble as the vibrations shake the walls.

"Set up a resonation pattern, loosen the bars," Romana smiles.

xxx

That took less time than she thought it might. She doesn't know how much time has passed since she left the Doctor but she's sure he's worried by now. Her hands are sore from slamming them against the door to create vibrations and raw from crumbling the bricks away. She picks up a brick from where she had placed them and uses it to knock the bars away, before smashing the window. There are voices and running footsteps outside the door. She scrambles through the window, kicking the box away from under her. She doesn't even notice as the glass slices at her arms and legs. She falls awkwardly to the pavement, twisting her ankle and sets off in a stumbling run.

_Time Lady. Time Lady. Come back._

_Rented a tent. Rented a tent. Rented a tent._ Concentrate on the gibberish.

_Time Lady, come._

_Shan't! Won't! You can't control me, you don't know my name. Rented a tent, rented a tent, rented a tent._

Gradually the voice in her head dies away. They only have a limited range. But it leaves pain behind. A lot of pain. So much pain, she can barely see past the purple spots in front of her eyes. She has no idea where she's going; the one thought clinging stubbornly on is to get away.

She knows she's going to collapse, she can tell by the malignant blackness eating at the edges of her vision. She has to reach safety before then.

xxx

Susan Ridley empties her watering can onto the parched, cracked earth. It is instantly absorbed, leaving the soil looking no different to before. She sighs. This heatwave is playing havoc with her garden. She tenderly lifts a drooping rose bloom. It flops back over as she removes the support of her hand.

She turns back to the house, intending to refill the watering can but only takes five steps before something makes her turn round. She's not sure what, but that is driven from her mind as she sees the heap on the pavement.

"Oh good Lord." She's wrenching the gate open and crouching beside the girl in a second. There's a pulse. A strange, erratic pulse but it's there.

"Dear…"

She stirs and moans. "Doctor…"

"Yes, dear. Don't worry, I'll get a doctor. Can you be moved?"

"My head…"

"Have you broken anything?"

"I won't be broken. I won't…"

The poor child seems delirious. The heat won't be doing her any good. She gingerly lifts her in her arms.

"Jack?"

"Ssh, child. Let's get you all fixed up then we can find your family."

"I hate the med-bay. I see more of that than any other room in the Tardis."

A coherent sentence. It would be encouraging if she wasn't talking nonsense. In the Tar-is? Tar is what?

Susan carries her in and, discovering she is apparently incapable of sitting up, lays her across the kitchen table.

"I'll just clean all your cuts up, then we can get you some clean clothes." The oversized t-shirt and shorts are dirty, torn and bloodstained. Catherine's clothes should fit.

She expects some reaction from the girl when she begins to swab her cuts with TCP. Her grandchildren always make such a fuss. But then her grandchildren only ever have grazed knees. These cuts are numerous and deep. Susan gasps as a shard of glass glints in one of the cuts.

"Good grief. What happened to you, child?" She smoothes the messy brown hair back. The girl seems to have fallen unconscious. She carefully tweezers the glass shard out and checks the other cuts. They seem to be free from glass and she cleans them carefully before applying plasters. She would ask what fun design she wants, but it doesn't seem to matter under the circumstances. She uses nearly the whole box anyway. In the end, there are almost more colourful plasters than skin.

"My head…"

"You're awake. That's good. Stay awake, keep talking. What's your name?"

"No…won't tell."

Susan frowns.

"Can you tell me how to find your family? Do you have a family?"

"Don't you dare…"

"It's alright, you're safe. I won't hurt you." She places a hand on the girl's arm. Slowly the girl brings her hand up to Susan's. It seems to reassure her.

"Do you have a headache?"

The reply is faint; she has to lean in to catch it. "It hurts…"

"Don't worry, I'll get you something for that." She finds the Calpo and pours out a spoonful.

"Here." She doesn't respond. Susan shakes her shoulder gently. She stirs.

"Come on, take this. It'll help." She supports her head as the girl obediently swallows.

"I'll go and get you some clean clothes now."

She stops in the doorway and looks back before leaving the room.

xxx

The Doctor and Jack stand in the road, watching the ambulance speed away. Jack looks at his wrist device.

"Romana, or at least her key, is in there."

"I guessed that, Jack!"

Susan overhears the last part as she turns to go inside. She needs to look up the bus route. She would have gone in the ambulance, but the paramedics discouraged it and asked her to come later.

"Excuse me."

The Doctor and Jack turn simultaneously.

"I heard you call him Jack. Are you…are you her family?"

"What happened to Romana?"

"I'm sorry…I'm so sorry…"

Jack hadn't known anyone could go that pale. Absolutely paper-white, huge intense dark eyes dominating his suddenly drawn face.

"I didn't know…it's my fault…I, I found her on the pavement. She seemed delirious…"

"What did she say?"

"I…she…"

"What did she say?" Merciless, relentless, emotionless.

"She said…she said she wouldn't be broken. She asked for a doctor. And she said…" She squeezed her eyes shut, to aid in remembrance and to stop the prickling tears. "She said 'I hate the med-bay. I see more of that than any other room in the Tar-is.'" She opened her eyes again and looked at the two men. "Does that make any sense to either of you?"

"She's as jeopardy-friendly as her mother," he whispers hoarsely.

"She had a very strange pulse…"

Jack interrupts, speaking for the first time. "How strange?" Normal strange or bad strange?

"It… it went, sort of, beat beat pause."

Normal strange. "What happened?" Keep talking, stop thinking.

"I took her indoors and cleaned her cuts. She…she had gashes all over her arms and legs. There was a shard of glass in one. She kept saying her…her head hurt. I…"

The Doctor makes a harsh guttural sound. There's such a strange tone to it; almost like a scream, a rasp and a crack together. His knees buckle and he would probably collapse if Jack wasn't holding him up.

"I can't reach her…she hurts…my head…"

"That's what she said," she whispers.

"Mental attack," Jack whispers to himself.

"What?" Had she heard what she thinks she did?

"What happened next?"

Susan continues hesitantly. There is something very strange about these two men. But then the girl- Romana, he said- was strange. It was a strange name.

"I gave her Calpo. I think she must have had an allergic reaction." The words are fast, tumbling out of her mouth as she admits her guilt. "Because when I came back with clean clothes, she was unconscious again and I couldn't wake her and she was very pale and her pulse was very slow and…"

"What was it?" the Doctor asks flatly. A dual heartbeat is faster than a single heartbeat. For a human to find a dual heartbeat very slow, it has to be dangerously slow. Or no longer a dual heartbeat.

"It sounded better, it was less erratic, but it was only about thirty beats a minute."

Thirty. Less erratic. Jack tries to ignore the sudden nausea.

"Which hospital?"

"St Johns."

"Thank you…"

"Susan. Susan Ridley."

"Thank you Susan." He takes her hand awkwardly, somehow her fingers end up splayed across his wrist. His eyes don't leave her face. She's about to wonder why when she feels the pulse under her fingers. The same strange, inhuman rhythm.

"Good name Susan. I knew a Susan," he says quietly.

She can only stare at him.

"Goodbye, Susan Ridley. Don't answer the door tonight. Trust me."

Before she can ask what he means, he's dropped her hand and the two have run off.

A few minutes later, she hears the noise of unearthly mechanics.

A/N: Yes, this is quite a short chapter. But I wanted to get an update up before I go on holiday tomorrow. There will be no updates for at least two weeks as the chance of internet access is none to none. There isn't even any signal for my mobile…


	15. Chapter Fourteen

A/N: Hello everyone! waves madly I'm back! I have a massive pile of alerts to catch up on, but I promised to update as soon as I got back so here it is. And look! Page dividers! Thank Sepik.

This chapter is dedicated to **agapi16** for being such a wonderful friend. Read and review her fic, Never Alone. Have you read my previous fourteen disclaimers? Then I don't need to repeat myself.

The Doctor darts round the console.

"Don't answer your door?" Jack voices his mystification.

The rotor begins to rise and fall. The Doctor stands back, calling up a file on the monitor.

"Susan Ridley. Born 1950. Well-off family. Happy home life, well educated, a happy marriage, children and grandchildren. Widowed in 2010. Murdered brutally, in 2014, by a psychopath who had skipped parole. This is the version I saved 'off-line', as it were. This copy won't be affected by any changes. It isn't linked…"

The Doctor decides that now is not the time to attempt to explain how the Tardis stores all the knowledge of the universe.

"But if she didn't answer the door…Susan Ridley etc. Widowed in 2010. Assisted in the capture of an escaped psychopath in 2014. Volunteered at a children's home. Adored by the children, won many community awards," he smiles. "She used to stargaze with a girl called Katie Whitehead. Katie went to become a brilliant astronomer, won a Nobel Prize. Always maintained that it was Susan's encouragement. Susan died peacefully in 2031, aged 81, leaving behind five children, six grandchildren and about five hundred honorary nieces and nephews."

"But why, out of all the people that will ever live, did you save her file?"

As far as Jack can tell, she had led a perfectly ordinary late 20th/ early 21st century life. Apart from the end, but even that wasn't unheard of. Why her?

"Don't know," the Doctor shrugs.

Jack gapes incredulously. "You did it on a whim?"

"No, my ninth self wasn't much for sudden whims. I must have had a reason. I just can't remember what. I found a Tardis memo in my jacket pocket when I was emptying them after regeneration. It said 'Save Susan Ridley (1950-2014) file offline.' I knew the date of the murder and I saw the date we were there."

"A. Tardis. Memo?"

"Yep. Don't remember printing the memo or ever hearing of Susan Ridley before, but that must be post-regenerative memory loss. Who else could have printed a Tardis memo?"

"A Tardis memo!" Jack splutters with laughter.

The Doctor presses a few buttons. A slip of paper shoots out of a slot Jack has never noticed before. He hands it to Jack, who looks down at it. It's a square of white card, with a blue block in the top left-hand corner and large, bold black type across the middle.

It reads 'Yes, a Tardis memo. Shut up, Jack.'

The Tardis settles and the Doctor strides to the doors, all laughter gone.

xxx

"Breathing shallow but steady. Pulse 20 bpm. Does that correspond with the heartbeat?"

"Um…no."

"No?"

"No."

The paramedic shakes his head, bemused. "Well, what do you read the heartbeat as?"

"There isn't one."

"What?"

"There isn't one. She's breathing and she's got a pulse, but she hasn't got a heartbeat."

"That's not possible."

"Try it yourself." The paramedics swap places.

"Must be a dud stethoscope. Bring me the spare."

They both listen to the spare.

"Nothing."

"Nothing."

"Maybe the docs will have an answer."

xxx

"Scan her." Dr Michael Bell orders. He's the Authority here.

"But…but, sir, she needs an appoint…"

"We have here a small girl, who may be dying, with a pulse but no heartbeat. I said, SCAN HER!"

Many scurry to do his bidding. Or to get out of the way of his temper.

xxx

She's so cold. Why so cold? She tries to wriggle her fingers and toes but there seems to be no response. There are several cold, metal things poking her. And it is so dark.

She forces her eyes open- somehow it doesn't feel natural- and instantly her vision is filled with blue. She knows of the blue eye, although thankfully she's never seen it. Or seen through it.

There is a figure in her vision. The Doctor, holding a large weapon, his face twisted by pure hatred. He fires.

She tries to scream, but all that comes out is a mad, metallic cry.

"Exterminate! Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!"

xxx

"Impossible."

"Check for yourself."

Bell lays a stethoscope on the right side of Romana's chest. The slow beat confirms the image on the monitor. The…thing on the trolley has two hearts. Fifteen ribs and a rather strange placement of the kidneys.

"Evacuate the hospital. Seal it off. And call _them_."

The others hesitate.

"Now!" They rush to do his bidding. He understands their hesitation. Of course it looks like a human but it isn't. And therefore has no human rights. Its physiology is amazing.

He crosses to the sink, washes his hands thoroughly and pulls on a pair of disposable rubber gloves. He breaks open a sterile sealed disposable syringe, and quickly swabbing the creature's arm, slips the needle into the blue vein showing clearly underneath the pale skin of the crook of her…its arm.

Deep red blood fills the syringe. At first glance, it appears almost human but microscopic examination will doubtless show it to be anything but. He swabs the inside of the creature's mouth. DNA sample, they will no doubt want a sample for genetic analysis. They could do it themselves, but he prefers this way. Much less fuss. He can be sure that it's done properly. Altogether less problematic.

He's no dentist, but the teeth all seem to be present and correct. No venomous fangs. One near the back is even wobbly. He smiles distantly as he remembers holding his tooth out to his mother, so proud of it. The image shifts, and it's still the same scene, but now the girl…thing is holding out a tooth, beaming, to a similarly messy-haired man dressed in brown.

He jerks away and hurries to the sink, scrubbing his hands thoroughly, as if to rid himself of the memory of the slight warmth of her skin. It would be much easier if she looked alien….that was the cunning of the disguise, of course. And a small girl. So devious.

xxx

"Personal effects?" Brown might look like dumb muscle but his brilliant brain ensures he's the Authority wherever he is.

"One key, worn on a chain around her neck. Five marbles, a sweet of some kind, some clay dice. A small wooden figure, crudely carved and painted, a scrap of paper covered in circle patterns and a coin. We don't recognise the currency, the symbols or the metal."

"Right. Bag it all." The two bodyguards behind him attend to the task, dumping the bags on the trolley beside the creature. _They _have arrived and effortlessly taken control. The hospital is empty and there are barricades around it.

"Blood?"

"Preliminary tests show many interesting acids. It does contain haemoglobin, but of a slightly different design to humans."

"DNA?" For the first time, the scrawny looking man seems to hesitate.

"DNA?" Brown likes his demands to be fulfilled instantly. He hates having to ask twice.

"We ran it through the database. It has at least a 65 match with human DNA." He holds his breath, hoping Brown won't punish the messenger.

"Ingenious. It would appear what we are dealing with here is not just an alien that looks like a human. But an alien that has deliberately disguised itself as human, even going to the extent of grafting human DNA on to its own."

The doctors are huddling together at the back of the room. Apart from two. They both stand a little apart from the group. They are both watching Brown. They both have expressions of disgust on their faces.

The erstwhile Authority of the Hospital's Freudian slips had evolved to uncertainty then self-disgust. Now it is an equal mix of self-disgust and disgust of Brown. He doesn't like what he sees and he recognises a lot of what he sees in himself.

Brown is still talking.

"Blood and DNA analysis should be completed within the next forty-eight hours. We will move the specimen to a secure location and you will have your hospital back." He turns to his bodyguards. "The time is now seventeen-thirteen. At twenty hundred hours, we will move the specimen to the basement."

Bell can stay silent no longer. "But that's the mortuary!"

Brown treats him to an icy stare. "I am perfectly aware of that."

Bell looks between the girl on the trolley and Brown. He has no doubt who the monster is here. The one letting a small girl die, for the crime of not being- entirely- human. So she can be 'investigated'.

_I called these people._ Of course every doctor has memorised the number, and not calling them would be tantamount to treason, but this feels worse. _It's my responsibility to help her. Return her to her father._ And somehow he knows, with absolute certainty, that that was who the messy-haired man was.

_Brown is spouting rubbish. She's not disguised; she's just a humanoid alien._

But he keeps his mouth shut. If he's established as a troublemaker now, it'll be harder to help her. Instead he glances across at a possible ally. He doesn't recognise her, but that doesn't mean anything. She has long ginger hair bound tightly in a schoolgirl plait down her back and silver-framed oval glasses perched on her nose. She's opening her mouth to speak. He inwardly cringes.

_Don't blow it, girl._

"Why would you move her to the mortuary?"

Brown performs his glare again. "It is alien. It is dying. There is no way to help it."

She persists. "We should at least try. Perhaps we could communicate with her."

"Where would you begin, Dr…"

"Tyler. Johanna Tyler."

"Where would you begin, Dr Tyler?"

She doesn't answer. Brown resumes his interrupted speech.

"You will all be taken to a secure location for forty-eight hours. We have prepared confidentiality contracts. Your families will be informed."

Bell catches a glimpse of Dr Tyler's blue eyes as she swings round and almost ducks from the anger and disgust in there.

Brown calls them back. "Your IDs please."

She's already left the room. Brown tuts in exasperation.

"Dr Bell, please go after Dr Tyler."

He pulls the door open and steps through.

The guard is unconscious on the floor.

On one side, her back to him, is Dr Tyler.

On the other side of the guard stand the messy-haired man and a black haired man.

The black haired man's eyes widen slightly upon seeing him and Dr Tyler swings round.

"Dr Tyler, they want our IDs." She gives him a cursory nod and pushes back past him.

"Glad to see you, sir." He doesn't know why he called him sir. After all, he must be at least twenty years younger. He just seems to exude an air of authority.

He walks back into the room and joins the queue to hand in their IDs. Dr Tyler is directly in front of him. They're the last two in the queue; therefore he is the only one to notice, as they pass the girl, that she presses something behind the girl's ear and pockets the bagged belongings.

She deposits her ID card in Brown's hand and has just turned her back by the time he shouts "This is blank!"

She moves so fast no one is sure what happens.

But a few seconds later the blank ID, the girl and Dr Tyler are missing. And they are left behind. In a locked room, the bodyguards discover as they bounce off the door.

xxx

The Tardis had landed in a hospital storage cupboard. Jack grabs a white coat. The Doctor doesn't. The door's locked, but it might as well not be, for all the resistance it puts up to the sonic screwdriver.

They emerge from the corridor cautiously. The corridor is deserted.

"Right and up." Jack reads off his wrist device.

They emerge from the stairwell cautiously. The corridor is deserted.

"Up again."

They emerge from the stairwell cautiously. The corridor is deserted.

They encounter their first guard around the corner.

"Stop!" He's holding a small but extremely functional-looking revolver.

"Hello," the Doctor ventures.

"ID," the guard barks. Obviously he doesn't believe in wasting time and effort forming full sentences.

The Doctor slowly reaches into his coat. The guard cocks his pistol. The Doctor hands the psychic paper over, grinning widely to show he means no harm.

"I'm Doctor John Tyler and this is Doctor Jack Har…" Jack shakes his head slowly, "…tnell."

The guard holds the paper up, scowling.

"This is blank."

"Distraction?" the Doctor whispers out of the corner of his mouth.

"No time. Bye," Jack nods towards the guard. His finger is tightening on his trigger.

_Bye. Sorry Romana. Sorry Jack. Sorry Jackie. Sorry Rose. Sorry Matthew. Sorry to 900 years of regrets._

Then the guard topples sideways.

"You again!"

"Me again," the redhead agrees.

"That was quite some distraction."

She shrugs. "I learned from a master."

"Like the glasses," Jack grins.

She scowls. "I hate them. I try not to wear them."

The door opens and a grey haired man comes out.

"Dr Tyler, they want to collect our IDs." The woman pushes past him back into the room. The man pauses and turns back. "Glad to see you, sir."

The Doctor and Jack stare after him.

Ten seconds later, the woman comes flying out of the door, Romana in her arms. She slams the door and hunches over it for a second or two. Then she's hurtling past them, with only a "Come on!" thrown over her shoulder.

The Doctor and Jack look after her, look at each other, shrug and run after her.

"I'm not needed then? I'll just leave you to effect all the rescues. I'm redundant."

"Stop sulking." They throw themselves down the stairs as alarms start sounding. Large men block the bottom. They turn to go back and find identical slabs of muscle blocking the top.

"And I wouldn't say redundant exactly." She continues, rescuing her slipping glasses and placing them in a pocket. "Seeing as your Tardis is the only hope of getting any of us out alive."

"We've got to get to it first! I didn't park it here invisibly, you know!"

"How far?"

The Hulks are advancing menacingly.

"About six foot." The Doctor measures the distance by eye.

"To the Tardis!"

"Oh, down two and right a bit. We should have taken the lift."

Different time, different place, different people. But a similar scenario.

_We're trapped between two advancing armies. What did I do? I must have been in this situation before._

Jack yanks out his sonic blaster and vaporises the step they're all huddled on.

They fall in an awkward tangle of limbs- in fixing the hole Jack manages to hit the Doctor in the face- and impact on the staircase below, tumbling down rather painfully.

It takes them precious seconds to disentangle themselves, curled together in a protective ball around Romana.

"Doctor, you okay?" Jack asks.

"Could've used a warning," the Doctor grumbles.

"Oh, the gratitude," they smile rather sadly.

"Enough reminiscing, come on!" She's already getting up.

It's a good job the corridor is empty of guards, as they set off at a stumbling, limping run. They can hear them thundering down the stairs though.

"Where did they come from?"

"Must have been shirking their duties with a coffee. Good job we didn't land in the middle of them."

"I've walked into a room of soldiers before. Not that bad."

They arrive at the cupboard. The Doctor unlocks it and they all bundle through just as the first Hulks belt down the corridor.

"Where to?"

"A block or so away from the hospital will do nicely, thanks."

The Doctor sets the co-ordinates and Jack takes Romana from the woman.

"I'll take her to the med-bay."

The woman sinks gratefully to the floor. "I had such a headache."

The Doctor faces her. "Who are you? That man called you Dr Tyler. Why do you use that name? How did you know about my Tardis? How did you know what we were talking about? How do you know so much about us? _Why do you do this_?"

The Tardis settles and she staggers to her feet. She walks up to the Doctor, presses Romana's bagged belongings into his hands and moves over to the door.

At the door she turns back.

"I have a rather vested interest in her well-being."

Before he can question her further, she's disappeared.

xxx

"How is she?"

Jack's look says it all.

"Do you have any more of these patches?"

"What patches?"

Jack gently turns Romana's head to the side and pushes her hair back. There's a small square in the hollow behind her ear.

"As far as I can make out, this is releasing chemicals that are fighting the bad chemicals. But it's working slowly." His next, unspoken words hang in the air. _Perhaps too slowly._

The Doctor walks over to a cupboard and pulls it open. There is only one box inside. A very dusty box sitting at the front of the shelf at his eye level. He gives his silent thanks to the Tardis and brings it over to Jack. There are five patches inside.

"Only five?"

"We'll have to position them carefully."

They place patches behind her other ear, on her throat over the carotid artery, and on the underside of her wrists.

"Where should we put the last?" After all, the Doctor's the expert on Gallifreyan/human physiology.

"Put it back. We'll use it if we have to."

Jack nods his understanding and places the box back in the cupboard.

"Could use some nanogenes."

"I can't lose her. Even when you two demolish the kitchen, even when she throws a tantrum over something completely ridiculous…oh God, Jack._I can't lose her._" He's barely aware that his voice has become the low growl of someone teetering on the knife edge of control.

"I thought she could regenerate."

The Doctor takes a deep breath. Suddenly he looks his age. "Oh, she can…theoretically she can…but under these circumstances…it might be too much. Her body might just shut down." He sinks into a chair next to Romana's bed.

"Regeneration, for me, has always been an intensely painful experience; the only alternative to death. I think it's something to do with being half human; the other Time Lords always seemed much more in control of the whole thing."

Jack's mouth is open in amazement. Half-human?

"Romana is three quarters human. I wasn't even sure if she would be able to regenerate. Technically she can, but it's likely to be exceedingly painful. And she's five years old. Even if she does survive regeneration, there's the problem of a body. What if she regenerated into an adult body? A five year old mind trapped in an adult body. Admittedly an intelligent five year old but still. Could I condemn her to that life? Might it be better for her to die?" He looks at her. She looks so vulnerable. Not a trace of her strong will or quick temper. She's just lying there, helpless. "I just don't know."

Jack draws up a chair and sits down next to the Doctor.

"She'll be alright. She's a tough little cookie."

The phrase sounds odd in Jack's mouth. They can both imagine Romana's reaction to being called that by Jack.

"So we just sit here?" Romana's not the only helpless one.

"Yes. We wait…and hope."

Neither takes their eyes from the small body.

A/N: There was something I had to say…something important….I know….PLEASE REVIEW!


	16. Chapter Fifteen

Disclaimer: Who decided that the Doctor should be colour-co-ordinated with the Tardis? Who thought it was a good idea to have Martha sneering in the first pic that nearly everyone saw? It wasn't me. It was the people who own Doctor Who. That doesn't include me.

It has been four days. Four days in which they have watched her slowly but surely slip away from them. Jack has looked for the last patch, but the box has disappeared. The Doctor doesn't want to use it anyway. He has a suspicion, and if his suspicion is right, and they use that patch, the consequences are likely to be…not good.

So four days later sees him slumped in a chair, holding her too-cold hand, watching the tiny movement of her chest as she breathes shallowly. They're gradually getting further apart. Every so often, there will be a particularly long pause, and a steel claw will squeeze his hearts. It barely loosens when he sees her breathe again. Sooner or later, she won't. His muscles ache, his body screams for rest and his eyes feel full of grit. He hadn't slept for a few days before all this and now he is definitely pushing the limit. He's terrified that he will fall asleep and wake up to find…to miss her.

He glances across at Jack, slumped in his chair. Even Sajkinan coffee can't fuel a human body for over a hundred hours without rest. He rescues the cup and drains it. It's stone-cold and he can taste the faintest trace of bitterness. Jack wouldn't have noticed it. As his vision begins to cloud, he mentally curses himself for forgetting.

_Jack's slumber might have less to do with his tiredness and more to do with the fact that I put a sleeping drug in his coffee. Then I go and finish the coffee myself. Sometimes, I really am an idiot._

His last awareness is thankfulness for the lack of anyone around able to notice what an idiot he can be.

xxx

_He struggles, shedding the clinging darkness. He manages to force his eyes open and focus on Jackie Tyler's face._

"_Jackie?"_

_She smiles and speaks to him almost gently. He's confused. She asks what happened. He tells her. He waits for a slap that doesn't come. Oh, there it is._

_Something isn't right. The details are fuzzy. It's almost as if they're not speaking verbally. It's similar to telepathic communication. No words, just the meanings._

_He asks about Romana. She points to her, sprawled across his chest. He picks her up and she scares him. He's scared for what she's done. He pushes her at Jackie. She's confused and she starts to offer her back. It's possible that that's the worst thing possible. He pushes himself as far away as possible, talking quickly. Jackie has to understand._

_The darkness smothers him again._

xxx

The Doctor fights his way free. The blackness has invaded his body, making his body so heavy. Warm, heavy and sleepy… sleepy! He shoots to his feet before he gets his eyes open. When he finally manages to pull them apart, he sees things as he left them. Jack slumped in his chair and Romana lying on the bed, breathing slowly. But there's an important difference.

_I know._

He doesn't want to worry Jack; he'll leave him a note. The Doctor turns to the paper and pen that have just appeared.

xxx

Jack stirs slowly. In the time it takes him to open his eyes, he registers his location by his aches. He must have fallen asleep in his chair. Not surprising really, the human body is not designed to go for days without sleep. Even the Doctor had been showing signs of tiredness. He manages to open his eyes. The bright white light immediately scorches them and he squeezes his eyes shut, seeing purple dots dancing before him. If it wasn't for the lack of a headache, or the fact that he hasn't being drinking, he would think he was hungover.

He gropes blindly for his coffee and encounters a piece of paper instead.

_**Don't disturb us. Don't try to wake us. **This could save her. I'm sorry Jack, I'll explain later if I get the chance._

Jack stares at Romana and the Doctor, lying together on the now-double bed. The Doctor has his fingers pressed against her temples, and their foreheads rest together. Both appear to be unconscious.

"If I get the chance…" If the Doctor's aim was to keep Jack from worrying, he's failed miserably. From that one phrase, he understands. Whatever the Doctor's doing will either save Romana or kill him with her.

xxx

The ship screams overhead. The residents of Mayblossom stand outside, staring upwards. It's the first ship they've seen in over five years. It's quite obvious, though, that the ship had no intention of stopping here. Something to do with its near vertical dive or the sparks it's spitting.

It crashes to ground in the forest, a few miles from Rose's village. The residents shrug and continue with their daily lives. Anything useful will be stripped out by the community over the other side of the forest before they can get there. Except for three. A woman and a small boy run towards the forest, pursued by another woman, breathlessly trying to explain the pointlessness of the expedition.

"It crashed! You can't just get in there and fly away. If it was salvageable, by the time we get there, it'll be stripped bare."

"By whom?" Rose shouts back over her shoulder.

"Others." Lydia trips over a tree root that Rose and Matthew both managed to avoid.

Rose stops and turns back. "Others?"

She sits up and rubs her ankle. "Yes, others. There's another community over the other side of the forest. You didn't think we were one village on the face of the planet, did you?"

"I've never seen anyone else."

"Well, we don't exactly pop back and forth easily. It's eight miles through dense forest."

Rose sometimes wonders whether Lydia actually says miles. Whether she actually speaks recognisable English or whether it's the Tardis translator. It's hard to believe that she would still be able to naturally understand the language of half a million years later. English changed enough in 800 years; she could have used the Tardis translator when they were studying the Canterbury Tales. It doesn't particularly worry her. What worries her is the idea that she and Matthew could be speaking completely different languages.

"Better hurry, then!"

Lydia pulls herself off the ground and hurries after them, ignoring the slight twinge in her ankle. She'd known it was hopeless; known that Rose was never going to just turn back. If she didn't have hope that eventually she'd find her way back to…him, she'd just curl up and die. It'll probably dim into acceptance as the years go past, but she'll always nurse that spark that says it could happen. It is possible. One day.

Lydia knows. She still nurses her own spark; one day he'll come back. Those years meant something.

She never told Rose about him, Rose never expected her to. Mind you, Rose never expected her to find out who her 'someone' was.

xxx

It's as bare as Lydia predicted. Anything that would come away has. In some places, that includes the walls, exposing the circuits beneath. The circuits themselves appear untouched, obviously they were deemed useless. Rose is disappointed to discover the lack of an escape pod. The lack of a pilot would suggest the two are linked; the pilot left in the escape pod.

They make their way through the ship to the cockpit. It is similarly bare, apart from a figure bending over the controls.

"Doctor?"

The figure spins round and Rose curses silently. Of course it isn't the Doctor. She doesn't know why she said it. It isn't brown-haired. Or male.

The woman pushes her blond hair back from her face.

"Bit past a doctor, poor thing." Rose shakes her head to dispel her imaginings. Not only is she going around believing fair-haired females to be the Doctor, but then she's imagining some response, a quickly suppressed flicker in the eyes, to the title.

"She's recycling material. If we had the facilities, which we don't. I dare say some of the circuits could be salvaged. This was a time ship; you could make a portable transmat. I wouldn't imagine it would be very comfortable, but it should let you travel in time. You might even be able to set up a bio-mech platform. If you knew what to do, which I don't."

_A bio-mech platform. _The phrase is just beyond his reach. He chases it across a clear dividing line and another almost blurred out of existence.

She jumps down and walks away without looking back.

Rose and Lydia stare after her, until she is lost amongst the trees.

"What was that about?"

Rose shakes her head wordlessly.

Matthew doesn't hear Lydia's question. His head is full of knowledge not his own.

_A portable transmat. This and this. I need a refracter; it'll be in the control panel. _

"Matthew?"

The knowledge starts to slide from his mind. He blocks out any interruptions.

"Matthew!"

He ignores them. Rose and Lydia watch as he constructs some kind of device, held together by emergency conducting bonding agent.

"Matthew!" Rose shakes his shoulder.

He stares morosely at the bundle of components. He knows it's almost finished. But he no longer knows how to finish it.

"What were you doing? What is that?"

He doesn't lift his eyes from it. "I was building a portable transmat with a bio-mech platform. This is a portable transmat with a bio-mech platform."

It's strange. He'd quite liked it here. It was all he had ever known. Whenever Rose talked of leaving, of finding the Doctor and Romana, he could never really make himself care. It was something far off and misty; people he didn't know, couldn't identify with.

But now, the idea of going back to the village, carrying on with his life, seems intolerable.

But the fact remains that they will have to.

The woman steps back inside.

"Finished? I thought you might find the knowledge." She carries a small bag and a much bigger bag.

"Not quite. I don't know how to finish it."

She takes it from Matthew.

"Not bad. Must have a strong link there. Well, I say not bad, I wouldn't have a clue how to construct it. Never got the chance to learn. But I know the basics, what should be there. I think this is enough to transport three people. I think you need to calibrate it though."

"How do I do that?"

"The bio-mech platform?"

"Here."

She quickly presses his pointing finger against a spike. Two drops of blood fall.

"There."

Matthew retrieves his finger and sticks it in his mouth.

Rose looks between the two.

"What is going on?"

"He misses you. Go to him." She shoves the small bag at Rose.

"You know the Doctor?"

"I never knew your Doctor."

"When did you meet him?"

"I met him six years ago. He has yet to meet me."

She turns back to Matthew. "This should activate it, just hold and think."

Lydia interrupts. "What's happening? What are you doing? Who are you?"

She answers with a question of her own. "Are you going?"

"Going where?"

"To find their Doctor."

Lydia flounders. "I…I…the library…"

"Do you realise you're the only ones within a few hundred miles with a library? I'll bring Daphne to keep an eye on it. She's always wanted to go."

"But… but we can't just disappear…"

"Would anyone miss you if you went?" Lydia looks down. "Would you miss anyone if you stayed?"

"Please come," Matthew whispers.

Lydia looks at Rose uncertainly. "Rose?"

"What kind of historian turns down a chance to travel in time?" Rose smiles, "What kind of friend needs to ask?"

"An uncertain one…oof." The wind is knocked out of her as her bag is shoved at her.

Rose looks between Lydia's bag and hers. Is this the sum total of five years? She looks between Matthew and Lydia. They are the sum total of five years.

"Are you coming?" It seems only polite to ask her along.

Blond hair flies as she shakes her head. "I chose to stay here."

"Well…" Well, what? Well, thanks? Thanks? It seems so inadequate.

"Well, thanks…" Rose trails off with the realisation that she does not even know her name.

The woman smiles. "Delta. My mother named me Delta Astra."

Delta! So many questions explode in Rose's mind, but Matthew has already activated the device and she can no more remove her hand from the device than regenerate.

Her last sight is of Delta dropping her shawl to the ground, revealing the patterns of Gallifreyan text swirling across her shoulder.

Then they are ripped away.

xxx

The Doctor first conscious awareness is of complete and utter contentment. He feels warm and safe and happy. He can just lie here and luxuriate; he's not going to risk shattering the illusion by opening his eyes. After all, this is a very rare occurrence.

However he seems to have other ideas. His mind has left the cocoon of drowsiness and is well on the way to full alertness, running quick checks, tracing the path of events that have led to this.

His eyes fly open and meet a pair of twice-familiar brown eyes.

"Finally. I was just getting bored." Only the look in her eyes betrays her worry, quickly banished by relief. She had woken up perhaps ten minutes earlier and had just reached the 'what if I've killed him?' stage when he woke up.

"Romana! You're alright!"

"I'm always alright!" She screams with glee as he sweeps her up and dances around the med-bay.

Jack had been in the kitchen, making yet more coffee when their laughter echoed down the corridor. He hadn't known he could run that fast especially after a sleep-deprived, worrying-himself-sick week.

Romana spots him in mid-air, over the Doctor's shoulder.

"Jack!" she shrieks. The Doctor whirls around and she throws herself at him. He's not sure whether she touched the ground between him and the Doctor. He thinks not.

He swings her around. "Ro-Ro!" She doesn't even care.

It takes them sometime to hear the ringing phone over their wild exclamations and shouts of laughter. They are wonderfully, riotously happy; the stresses and frustrations of the previous week relieved. Laughing for the sheer joy of being alive and well together.

The Doctor dashes over to the wall and hits the button. He got tired of having to run to the console room every time to answer the phone. Most times it had stopped by the time he got there. Now the Tardis phone can be answered from any of the main rooms. He had been quite pleased with the idea, even more pleased when it actually worked and didn't blow out their communications and leave them stranded in the vortex.

Jackie Tyler's voice fills the room. "How long does it take to answer the phone? I thought that was the idea of all those big buttons."

The Doctor interrupts. He hasn't the faintest idea what she actually said, he recognised the tone. The only other thing he registered was the owner of the voice.

"Jackie!" he says delightedly, "Romana's okay!"

"Okay? Why wouldn't she be okay? What have you been doing now?"

Over on the other side of the room, Jack and Romana wince.

xxx

Half an hour later, the Doctor finally presses the button again.

Jack sticks his head around the door, shock on his face. "Silence. And after only half an hour. What happened? Did she get instant laryngitis?"

"No. She decided to save it so she could scream at me to my face."

"London, then?"

"London."

The Doctor strides to the console room. Romana is curled up in his chair, eating a banana. The banana skin will probably be used in conjunction with a joke played on Jack later, even though officially, it might still be Jack's turn as the Doctor fell prey to his revenge rather than Romana.

"Where are we going?"

"London."

"Why?"

"Two reasons. One, your grandmother's hand has a quick, sharp appointment with my face, after we tell her the whole story. And two, what day is it the day after tomorrow?"

Romana hops off the chair and promptly trips over her scarf.

The Doctor sighs, loudly.

"What?" She stuffs the banana skin into her pocket. Yes, Jack will definitely be encountering it later. "I haven't worn this for a week."

"That doesn't count. You have been unconscious for the past week. Is that what it takes to separate you from it?"

"Perhaps." She wanders over to the calendar, stuck on the inside of the interior door. Jackie had made it quite clear what her feelings would be if they turned up one day, having aged five years in one month or so. So they try to mark days as Jackie does. Occasionally, they visit Earth and discover they're a day or two out, but they have been keeping meticulous dates since their last visit, in awareness of the approaching date. Even this past week, Jack has been marking a day off every night cycle. Jackie would be furious to miss Romana's birthday.

"Yay! Boo."

Jack wanders into the console room. "Yay, boo?"

"Yay, it's my birthday. Boo, I missed an entire week of present-hunting."

"You've got ten minutes."

Romana runs from the console room. She'll find them in the first place she looks, but she won't actually get to touch them till her birthday. The Tardis enjoys playing hide and seek with her presents. As soon as she finds some, they'll disappear. The only problem was on her 4th birthday. The Doctor, fiddling with the circuits, accidentally caused the Tardis to forget where they were. So she, the Doctor, Jack and Jackie all played Hunt the Presents. And in an infinite timeship, that was no easy task. Luckily, they were hidden in a more-used room. Otherwise, they might have had to declare them lost, and they would have become one of those things that turn up years later.

Jack scowls. "And boo, I have to wait to revenge my hair." At the Doctor's surprised look, he explains "Can't play tricks on the birthday girl, can I? That's not fair."

He pulls a stick of celery from his pocket and holds it against his chest, where his lapels would be if he wore a jacket with lapels. He adopts what he probably imagines to be a posh English accent. In fact, it's the worst accent spoken by a Tardis traveller since Rose in 1879 Scotland. "That's just not cricket."

The Doctor pales as Jack pulls a small book from his other pocket. He knew this day would come. It was simply inevitable. One book, an infinite sentient timeship to hide it in, Jack Harkness looking for it. He's found his album of past selves.

A/N: I am now completely sick of the summary that says nothing about the story and the wildly wrong genres. So I am asking you, my wonderful reviewers, the people who actually read this story, please tell me what you think. Please. I am famously indecisive and need your help!


	17. Chapter Sixteen

A/N: Sorry for the delay. I hope the relative length of this will make up for it. This chapter is dedicated to **Oy Wilson **for the review!

They appear somewhere and fall in a heap, fighting off dizziness and nausea. A terrifying thought occurs to Rose and she manages to command her mouth to shape the words.

"Matthew, does that thing give us protection?"

He groans. "What?"

"Remember what I said about the cavemen and the rip engine? Around Bromley?"

It might have been an affirmative answer.

"We couldn't take Das home because the rip engine polluted his cells. If he travelled in time again, the vortex pressures would tear him apart. The Doctor said that any time traveller gets their cellular structure flipped but the Tardis gave us protection. Does that? Because I saw someone get ripped apart and it didn't look fun. Incidentally, where are we?"

"Umm, Rose. This might be a problem." Lydia's the only one who's managed to open her eyes.

Rose opens her eyes. The person gaping at her causes her to run through every curse she knows, including a few that she has no idea of the meaning, but the Doctor blushed when she copied him.

She jumps to her feet, pulling Matthew with her, trying to hide him. He drops the device.

"Oh. My. God." A younger Rose stares at the woman huddling at the opposite end of the cubicle, and the boy she's trying to hide in her arms. It's too late; she's seen the eyes and the ears. "Me and…and him? Really? How long?"

_Not good. Not good. Many things about this are not good. _Rose racks her brain, trying to remember this scene. She glances around, hoping for a memory trigger. Her eyes fall on a discarded plastic cup lying on the floor. An image leaps to the forefront of her mind; the same cup lying only an inch away from her nose. This is where she woke up on the floor. The Doctor and Jack were looking for a part for the Tardis and she went shopping. One minute trying on a skirt, the next waking up on the floor.

"Matthew? Is that your name?" The younger Rose kneels to his level.

Matthew walks calmly forward out of his mother's arms and up to Rose.

She smiles at him. "Hello Matthew."

He smiles back. "Hello." He reaches out and the younger Rose slumps to the floor, her face close to a discarded plastic cup.

"You didn't hurt me, did you?" Rose asks.

He looks up at her. "Did I?"

"Well, no. You took this memory though. Blacking out like that scared me."

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. I forgot about it in an hour."

Lydia hands Rose her bag.

"Hope I got everything." On arrival, the contents of their bags had spread themselves widely. She'd been picking them up.

Matthew looks quickly around the room. "I can't see anything. Now, come on, we need to leave before you…she wakes up."

"Matthew, does that give us protection?"

He looks down at the device. Being dropped on the floor doesn't seem to have done it any harm.

"I don't know."

Rose nods her understanding and places her fingertips upon the surface. Lydia takes a deep breath and does the same.

Matthew studies the device intently. Rose watches and wonders what's happening to him. She wonders whether she likes it. Just that morning, he had splashed around with his friends. Now, he's abandoned that life without a second glance. Perhaps it's the Time Lord in him waking up. And part of her mourns that small boy and his life on Mayblossom.

Matthew presses the button and they disappear just as the girl slumped on the floor stirs.

xxx

Rose wanders back to the Tardis, laden with her purchases. She manages to open the door and instantly drops her bags on the floor. A few pieces of lingerie spill out of one bag just as Jack wanders into the console room.

He gives an appreciative whistle. "How about a private showing? My room, midnight."

The Doctor hauls himself out from under the console and gives Jack the worst glare he's had since the last time he flirted with Rose.

"That's all sorted now. That component should make the refuel more efficient, should only take about twenty-four hours." He swings round to grin at Rose. "A nice peaceful day in Cardiff, how does that sound?"

Rose looks up from stuffing her purchases back in their bags and is momentarily captivated. A trace of something tickles her mind. Blue eyes, big ears…something to do with the Doctor.

"Rose?"

The trace vanishes and she is hauled back to reality. She kicks herself. Of course blue eyes and big ears have something to do with the Doctor. It's what he looks like. Now she's been caught staring at him like a complete idiot.

"A nice peaceful day with you? Pigs might fly."

"Actually, on the planet Porcino Prime, by the year 3300-"

Laughing, Rose disappears through the interior door.

"I resent that. Why is the idea of me having a peaceful day for once so unbelievable? I mean, what can happen in twenty-first century Cardiff? Safest place in the universe."

Jack hasn't heard one word of his protestations. "There's actually a planet of flying pigs?"

xxx

Jack is playing with Romana's new Barbies, given to her by Jackie's friends. He's slightly more than tipsy, as evidenced by the way he keeps hitting himself in the face while trying to fly them through the air. The Doctor is reading a thick book about black holes, laughing quietly to himself and making corrections in the margins while picking at his sixth slice of cake. There is a small gash on his cheek; Jackie was horrified when her ring drew blood. He doesn't mind. He deserved everything.

Romana is in the kitchen with Jackie. She's wearing Jackie's present to her; a pair of dungarees with a sunflower embroidered on the front pocket. It's already clear that she's going to wear them till they fall to pieces. The Doctor gave her a large, rather clunky locket. That's strung round her neck on the same chain as her Tardis key.

She's chatting non-stop about everything and anything. What's being said doesn't matter. She's occasionally dropping in a sentence in Gallifreyan and Jackie is completely failing to notice.

Jackie notices when she drops to her knees, gasping for breath.

"Romana?"

Jack appears in the doorway, his eyes still slightly unfocused. "Jackie, the Doctor…Romana?"

He scoops her up in his arms and carries her through the living room. The Doctor is sitting on the sofa, arms wrapped around himself as Romana is doing. Jack carefully lowers Romana onto the sofa next to him. Unfortunately, his depth perception is slightly messed up. She bounces once and curls up into a tight ball.

"Doctor, what's going on?"

He gasps in pain. "Someone…must have got a…sample… of my blood. They're…using it to…track me."

"And it hurts?"

The Doctor manages to look incredulously at Jackie.

"Yes, Jackie. It does. Every… cell in my…body is being…pulled. Whoever it is… is using the attraction of…the same DNA…to pull themselves through…time and space."

"Why's it affecting Romana as well?" Jack asks.

"Half of her…DNA'S mine."

"But she's worse."

"She's younger."

Jackie interrupts. "How come you didn't use this to trace Rose? You've got Romana. And me."

"That really wasn't an…option, Jackie." The pain was lessening, the time jumpers obviously having settled into a space-time. "It's very primitive. You don't choose where or when to land. I could have ended up in 1987, when she was a baby. Or with one of her relatives. The chances of hitting the right Rose would have been miniscule. And I might have created enough paradoxes to bring the Reapers before I found her."

Romana hasn't uncurled yet.

"Romana?"

She looks up. She's pale and shaking. The Doctor takes a chicken soup wafer from his pocket and gently feeds it to her.

"Why do you have a food wafer in your pocket?"

"Much tastier and more nutritious than prison food."

Jack returns from the kitchen with a jar of marmalade and a spoon. However, when he removes the lid, a fur of mould covers the top.

"Jackie, that is exceedingly irresponsible of you," the Doctor turns around. "You could be accelerating the evolution of the Dren. They're not supposed to evolve until 2900."

Both Jack and Jackie look blank.

"In the 2700's, the surplus food mountains began to sprout an extremely strange type of micro-organisms. They would send out spores and suffocate anyone who came near. The terrified humans decided to dump the lot on an uninhabited planet. It so happened they chose one with an excessive greenhouse effect. Within two centuries, the hostile mould had evolved into a form of sentient life." He says this all with a straight face. The effect is ruined by the giggling coming from the sofa.

"Ha. Very funny, Doctor," Jackie rolls her eyes.

"Yes, I thought so too," the Doctor grins widely and heads for the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know."

"You're leaving already?"

"Jackie… I could stay here for centuries…"

Jack snorts. Jackie rolls her eyes again. "And Lucifer just installed an ice rink."

"But," the Doctor ignores the interruption, "we have to find whoever it is who wants to find me and stop them. Be back in no time."

He disappears quickly. Jackie will no doubt express her displeasure when he returns.

xxx

It involves a lot of adjustments to the Tardis and the Doctor sticking a wire to his arm. Then they wait. It doesn't take long. Soon the pain comes again and the Tardis starts to move. Then comes a very bumpy ride. Jack doesn't quite understand what they are doing, but apparently they are simply tracing the link pulling on them.

"Isn't that dangero... oof." Jack has collided with a wall as the Tardis lurches and shrieks. It's the worst landing he's experienced. They just seem to drop.

"Where are we?"

"The Tardis lost the link. The jumpers must have settled into a space-time."

"So where are we?"

"Don't know! Let's find out!"

Jack shivers as soon they stepped out of the Tardis. "Why's it so cold?"

"It is quite chilly," Romana agrees.

"Chilly? It's… it's freezing!" Jack manages to talk through his chattering teeth.

The room that they have landed inside is a long but low-ceilinged square. The Doctor wanders over to one wall. When he takes his hand away, there is a handprint left. It's a window, misted up. He wipes a patch clear. What he sees makes him hurriedly clear a much larger patch and step back in revulsion.

"What the…" Jack starts.

"Children," Romana says wonderingly.

"Yes," the Doctor replies, his voice toneless. "Children."

He wipes the whole wall clear, slowly and deliberately, moving away from them. At the end he stops and pulls out his sonic screwdriver. Then he paces back up to them.

"A child from every species. Held in suspended animation. For too long. Brain dead, every one of them."

Romana presses against the glass. Behind it, the pod contains a humanoid child, covered in fine pale green fur. The incisors barely jut beyond the lips. She knows this species. She knows that the eyes now permanently hidden behind the thick eyelids are a deep purple-black.

"Who could do this?" she whispers. She doesn't realise she's crying until Jack smears them across her cheeks with his thumbs. The Doctor is still staring at the pods.

Suddenly Jack stiffens. "I think they can answer that question."

They all turn.

Of course. There are basically two types of monster in the universe and it isn't dependant on species. There are those who simply do what they do. And the cold, calculating, scientific types. The ones who do what they want, fully aware but regardless of everyone else. It's like the difference between a trap and poison. Of course anyone who could do this would be poison. This aren't children, they're specimens. And this is all in the name of science, to advance this species' development.

"Finally. You've come voluntarily. Most accommodating of you. It would have taken us at least another five years to be able to pull you here. As it is, she's the perfect age."

The Doctor and Jack instantly take up defensive positions either side of Romana. It's always about her. She's too vulnerable. And she makes him vulnerable. Before, the main aim of the evil he ran across was more often than not world domination. Now, the aforesaid evil sees an opportunity in her. It's becoming ridiculous. The Doctor knows he has always under-estimated her worth to others. Others that do not necessarily have her best interests in heart. But what can he do? He tried the living on Earth idea. They never even got to Earth. Perhaps he should have stayed on Earth when she was a baby. But that would never have worked. Even Jackie could see through it. He couldn't have healed there. And Romana would have grown up with something missing. And they would never have met Jack again. Perhaps he and Rose should have just stayed on Earth till the twins were old enough. What does it matter? They didn't. This is what happened, this is his life.

Romana is pale. "Me?"

"No," the Doctor says harshly. "Never. I'd rather kill her myself than let that happen to her."

"We want the girl. We will have the girl. Our collection is almost complete."

"Time to go, Doctor?" Jack hisses.

It chuckles derisively. "I think not. Look behind you."

"Oh please. Like we're really going to…" Jack is interrupted by the ominous click of weapons. They turn slowly. Old-fashioned laser guns, but with an inhibitor. These are designed to kill.

"Look, Romana's more human than Time Lord. Take me instead."

Jack and Romana shout together. "No!"

"You are old. You have lived again and again. We need the girl."

There is a pause. The Doctor hastily calculates.

"Romana, take Jack's hand." They both look at him oddly, but comply. Obviously there is no chance for him to explain whatever plan he has cooked up. The Doctor walks around to Jack's other side and grasps his hand.

"Sorry, she's not available now or ever. Be seeing you!"

And the three disappear.

xxx

All six legs crumple as they find the solid tarmac of the Powell Estate under them. Jackie, watching from the balcony, sees them.

"Oh my god! What are you doing? Where's the Tardis?"

Her voice carries easily. The Doctor waves weakly up.

"Hiya, Jackie. We're back and," he glances at his watch, "only an hour after we left."

xxx

"But what happened? Where's the Tardis? Oh no, you're not stranded here, are you?"

"No," the Doctor replies, setting everyone's mind at rest. "Hopefully. This transmat is programmed to find Jackie's flat. Its twin is programmed to find the Tardis."

He looks around at their faces.

"What?" he says defensively. "I couldn't program an emergency teleport into the Tardis, so I thought this would be the next best thing." He plucks a tiepin off his tie and scans it with the sonic screwdriver. "One-use apparently. Or it might be the thing about three of us together on one trip." He reaches across and applies the sonic screwdriver to Romana's locket as well. "That still works. Well, it should. We didn't activate it."

Their expressions range from curiosity (Romana) to incomprehension (Jackie).

He sighs. "Romana, that locket is a transmat which, when activated, will bring you here at the appropriate date. It's the last resort if we are condemned and unable to reach the Tardis. It's sort of Emergency Program One without the Tardis. Now you'll stay here with Nanny Jackie and…" And what? Don't worry? Be a good girl? "And don't give her any more reason to slap me." He hugs them both, fishes a button out of a pocket, flashes his grin then both he and Jack are gone.

xxx

They fall into the middle of a fair. Matthew drops a foot onto a bouncy castle. Rose and Lydia drop a foot onto the ground behind the bouncy castle.

Matthew attempts to get to his feet and promptly falls over as the ground sinks and shifts beneath him. The soft, strange, bright yellow ground…

"Hey! Boy!" Matthew looks around. All the others (strangely, and somewhat pointlessly, jumping up and down) are girls. He looks over in the direction of the voice. There's a man beckoning at him.

By the time Rose and Lydia have picked themselves up, collected their belongings, cleaned their clothes to attempt to appear respectable (all three are quite definitely worse for wear by now) Matthew has been ticked off for sneaking on the bouncy castle without paying and is now being upbraided for having such filthy feet. Although the adults of Mayblossom have shoes left over, the children tend to go barefoot.

"Matthew! There you are!"

"Are you his mother?" the man demands.

"I am, yes," Rose agrees, "I apologise for any inconvenience he may have caused. He's always wandering off and getting into mischief. Come along now, Matthew. Say sorry to the man."

Matthew obeys and they rush away before the man can open his mouth again. If he watched them, he would notice that they disappeared from the middle of a crowd.

They appear again in a large, low square room. Lydia immediately shivers and pulls two cardigans out of a bag. She passes one to Rose.

"Thanks," Rose chatters. Her breath fans out before her in clouds.

"This is a bad sort of cold," Matthew says.

"Bad?"

"It's wrong, it's…it's still. It's…artificial, calculated….it's dead."

Rose and Lydia have the same mixture of confusion and fear on their faces.

"Oh, how wonderful. Just when we thought we had lost them, just when we thought our great work was never to be completed. Another comes! Three Time Lords in the universe and all three come to us! Our work is recognised."

_Three? The Doctor. Romana. Matthew. They were here. They escaped. They're alive!_

Rose throws back her head and laughs

The leader gestures and armed aliens approach. The three back away till they come up against a wall. A warm, wood wall.

Rose spins round and throws her arms around the Tardis.

"See you soon, old girl," she whispers.

Two trios face the same enemy. Both trios stand together. Both trios defeat them. Both trios simply disappear.

xxx

Romana sits on the chair, swinging her legs, and glares at everyone.

"What about these, sweetheart?"

Romana glares at Jackie.

"What about these?"

"Oh, they're pretty! What do you think, Romana?"

The intensity of her glare, even split between the unfortunate assistant and Jackie, is enough to make grilled bread product.

xxx

The Tardis spins through the vortex. The Doctor sets co-ordinates but it is really instinct working the controls. His mind is fully occupied with thinking of what the ex-leader had said to him and the implications it holds.

"_You cannot stop us. Our work is recognised. It must be completed. You know this yourself. Why else would the only three with Time Lord blood come to us?"_

Three.

xxx

Romana stands out on the balcony, watching for the return of the Tardis. She's been waiting a week. They'll be back. Of course they will. They have to be. The pain tugs at her body again but she simply clutches the railing tighter. Sometimes it's worse than others. She supposes that means the jumpers are passing nearer to her current time-space. Jackie comes up behind her and wraps her arms around her. She leans back into the embrace as Jackie presses a kiss to the top of her head. They stand like that till it becomes too dark to see.

xxx

It has been a week since the Doctor and Jack have left. Romana lies on the floor, drawing some kind of alien creature. Jackie, preparing dinner, discovers a certain something hidden behind tins of baked beans.

"Romana?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you have any idea how these came to be behind the baked beans?"

"Probably the same way they ended up down the back of the sofa, under the bed, and on top of the wardrobe."

"How on earth did you reach there?"

"I threw them."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"If they're on top of the wardrobe, you can't wear them."

"That's why then."  
"The Doctor wears glasses."

"His look nice."

"So do yours."

"No, they don't."

"Yes, they do."

"They don't."

"They do."

"Don't."

"Do."

"Don't."

"You refused to choose them yourselves. And they do look pretty."

Romana stalks into the kitchen and snatches the glasses from Jackie's hand. Jackie watches her go and wonders where they will end up this time. Even if she hadn't discovered Romana had inherited the eyesight of two incarnations of the Doctor, the atmosphere would still be similar. This petty dispute just gives them some way to vent their frustrations. He's never been gone this long before.

xxx

It is really her fault. Not that she will be admitting that to Jackie. She has been told to stay in the flat while Jackie went shopping and she has deliberately disobeyed and gone to the park. She swings on the swings for a long time, and has just gone down the slide for the third time when a man approaches her. She's wary, of course she is; but she has her locket and she answers the questions carefully. She's six; she's staying with her nanny on the Powell Estate while her dad is away. No, she doesn't know how long he will be gone, probably not long.

When Jackie turns up, she is frantic. The sulky part of her takes pleasure in this. The nicer part feels guilty. Jackie turning up does not help the situation. Between their stories, she is condemned. The man is a truant officer. And she should be in school.

So she spends the next day completely bored out of her head. The other kids try to do the lessons; she tries not to. It's going to be bad enough when she literally vanishes off the face of the Earth, without them remembering her as the Year One girl who knew it all.

Jackie picks her up and she tells her that the only way she's going back is if she's dragged back.

The next day, Jackie drags her back. Another day of frustration as the other kids take five minutes to form a clumsy sentence.

Two more days pass in this manner. She slips up in the middle in the week. If it had been a writing exercise, she would have been fine. She would have had time to think. As it is, the question catches her off guard. It also might have helped if she'd been listening.

"Why do we need to know the times tables? We can use calculators."

The teacher smiles. She has this explanation down pat, having been asked the same question every year for the past ten years.

"When you learn your times tables, it's like having a calculator in your very own head. You can take it everywhere. Calculators are only necessary for big calculations, such as…what's 7563 x 2765?"

Romana, off in a daydream, only catches the question. Not fully aware of her surroundings, she answers "20911695."

The whole class hears her.

Unfortunately her first response to realising what she has done is to curse in Gallifreyan. Not as bad as the words the Doctor uses when he thinks that she can't hear him but still something Jackie would never want to hear out of her mouth.

"What was that?" the kids whisper to one another.

"What did you say?" the teacher asks.

An idea sparks in Romana's brain. Perhaps there's a way to brazen this out. She repeats herself, silently apologising.

"Is that your native language, Romana?"

Yes. But no. She doesn't know where the teacher got the idea she's foreign. Although she is. A lot more foreign than anyone can imagine. "It's Gallifreyan. Only me and my dad speak it."

She can almost see the teacher's thoughts. Lots of children make up their own languages.

"Well, please speak English when you're at school."

Romana lets herself relax a tiny bit.

"How did you know the answer?"

"I…I have a calculator." She whispers, trying hard to look guilty. It's a new experience; she has innocent off to a tee.

"Well, you shouldn't have done that. As I was telling the class, calculators aren't the answer to everything."

She nods silently.

"Now Thomas, can you tell me what 3 x 2 is?"

Her two hearts stop racing.

xxx

She doesn't mention the incident to Jackie, other than to warn her that she has been caught speaking Gallifreyan, and they believe that it's a made-up language that only she and her dad speak. And the scolding she gets for being that careless is quite enough.

She manages another two days without arousing suspicion. The monotony of this life is enough to blur the days together, so that she doesn't realise how long they have been gone till Jackie says that the Headteacher has told her that Romana needs a school uniform if she's going to be attending the school for any length of time. Dungarees are not acceptable.

Romana flatly refuses to let Jackie purchase one.

She is quite certain that she has never been happier to hear the Tardis. She's leaping down the steps before Jackie has registered the sound. She's in such a hurry she forgets to remove her glasses; as she realises when Jack promptly bursts out laughing.

The Doctor whips out his glasses and beams at her. She isn't appeased; his glasses aren't oval and gold.

"Where have you been? I had to go to _school_!"

Jack's laughter doubles in volume. She briefly contemplates kicking him.

"Nothing happened?"

"Nothing much. They're going to wonder what happened to me."

"Well, if your teachers come looking for you, I'm not kidnapping them. Perhaps we should stay here," the Doctor says straight-faced.

Romana is speechless.

"Just kidding!"

A/N: I'm afraid updates may become even longer. I've just started sixth form, and will have to fight my inclination to write than do work. But reviews actually do motivate me to write, I'm not just saying that.


	18. Chapter Seventeen

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Kates Master for the 150th review! It is reaching milestones like this that really encourage me to write. Thank you to everyone that has reviewed.

Disclaimer: All my characters! I own everything! Er…no. All BBC's. But I can dream.

"Come on, come on, come on, my _beautiful_ ship!" The Tardis traces the link back. "Come on, find them, find them, you can do it."

Without warning, the Tardis lurches. The Doctor reaches towards a control but is thrown against the wall as a shockwave ripples through the ship.

Romana clings to a strut as the Doctor and Jack are flung from wall to floor to wall.

Then, just as suddenly, the Tardis settles into her normal rhythm.

The Doctor and Jack pick themselves up. Romana doesn't let go of the strut.

"What was that?" Jack says shakily.

"A bad landing," The Doctor snaps, pressing the palm of his hand against the gash in his forehead.

"We haven't landed," Jack points out.

"Overlapping timelines, then."

"Look me in the eye, Doctor, and tell me that you believe that."

The Doctor turns away and strides over to Romana.

xxx

The Tardis lands just as the Doctor finishes sealing the cuts on Romana's hands. He heads towards the doors.

Jack calls him back. "Shouldn't you check what's outside?"

"What's the fun in that?"

"Well, you don't know what's outside. You don't want to walk out into the middle of, and this is just a random example, the middle of a gangland shootout?"

The Doctor scowls and mutters under his breath.

"Now, now." Jack waggles his finger. Yet the mask of the normal banter can't hide the worry they all feel.

"I'll risk it."

xxx

Jack draws his coat around him. "Well, this is a cheery place!"

"Shut up," the Doctor snaps.

"Well, pardon me!"

"I've been here before. I know it. Romana…" The Doctor turns to discover a distinct lack of Romana. "Don't wander off," he completes.

xxx

She hasn't gone far before she trips over something.

xxx

She's screaming. Not a long sustained note, but short gasps of horror. The Doctor and Jack run towards the sound and find Romana backing away from something, still screaming. The Doctor scoops her up and holds her tight while taking a look at what had so terrified her. To say he's shocked would be an understatement. He's met his other incarnations before, of course he has. But he's never seen the dead body of his current incarnation. His tenth body still dressed in the rags of a velvet suit. Now he remembers. This is Asinta. One of many planets where he fought the Daleks. But he didn't die. Not here. Not finally. And the regeneration was Eight to Nine. This Doctor seems to have gone through two regenerations without changing his clothes.

"Doctor. Doctor! She's alive." Jack is kneeling beside the prone form of a girl, no, a woman that the Doctor notices for the first time, wavy blonde hair matted with blood and mud lying across her face.

"This is the Time War," he says slowly, trying to clarify the situation in his head. "But I've died. This is a universe where I died in the Time War. But this doesn't make sense. There aren't parallel universes of Time Lords. And…"

"Doctor!" Jack has been gingerly checking the woman over. Through a large rent in the material covering her right shoulder, he can see strangely familiar patterns etched on the skin. Romana drops out of the Doctor's arms and they both kneel down beside Jack, trying to ignore the other Doctor's body.

"Doctor, isn't that Gallifreyan?"

The material disintegrates at the Doctor's touch, allowing them full view of the swirling patterns.

"What does it say?" Jack asks.

"Romanadvoratrelundar," Romana quietly translates.

"There's some on the other arm. What does that say?"

Romana shakes her head.

"Doctor?"

The Doctor scans the pictorial text. A strange, closed look appears on his face.

"Doctor?"

"This universe is going to crash and burn," he says softly. "We have to leave."

"Will the Tardis work? I thought you said that it drew its power from the universe."

"It brought us here," The Doctor says shortly, trying to think of a way to cross a barrier that he can't accept exists.

Jack picks up the girl and he and Romana start to walk back to the Tardis.

The Doctor is left alone beside the body of his impossible parallel version.

"I'm sorry there's no one. I'm sorry there's only me," he murmurs, before taking a box from his pocket and striking a very special match. He drops it on the body, which is then instantly engulfed in red flame.

Then he turns and runs away from his nightmares.

xxx

She's been lying comatose in the medical bay for eight days, through the endless calculations greatly hampered by the Doctor's complete incomprehension (after all, how can you work out how to leave a universe that is not supposed to exist?), though the ride back which is just as bad as the first time, through her treatment and external recovery. The Doctor and Jack take in turns to look after her: they've discovered another patch of Gallifreyan decorating her stomach. The Doctor wouldn't tell them what it meant; Romana said part of it said Delta.

The Doctor is embroiled in calculations, trying to work out how such a parallel universe exists, in order to take his mind of the implications and Jack is taking a break while Romana sits with her when they are alerted to her awakening by a terrified screaming.

When they enter, the woman is hunched against the headboard, sobbing wretchedly and hiccupping "You're not…no, you're not…you're not."

"What happened?" Jack asks.

Romana shrugs helplessly. "She just woke up screaming. I tried to calm her down, I told her my name and she just froze and burst into tears."

The woman looks up at their voices and catches sight of the Doctor.

She screams again and topples sideways off the bed. She huddles desperately against the wall as they approach her.

"Go away! Leave me alone! You're dead, you're _dead_!"

The Doctor crouches in front of her, careful to leave a sizeable gap between them.

"Delta…"

She freezes and peeks out from between her fingers. "How do you know?"

"I imagine that was the whole point of…those." He vaguely indicates. "I'm not him but I am the Doctor. I'm the Doctor from…from a parallel universe."

She gives a shaky laugh. "Don't be ridiculous. Whoever you are and whatever you want, make it quick and relatively painless."

"I know. It is ridiculous. It isn't possible. Yet here you are."

"Shut up," she snaps. "I'm not interested in any stories. Can we skip to the torture? Not that'll do you any good."

"We're not going to torture you. Why would we bother healing you to torture you?"

"I can't give you any information unconscious."

"Of course you can. I know of half a dozen places within ten light years of anywhere where you can buy truth drugs. They'll completely destroy the victim's mind but you get the information. Why would I go to all this effort?"

"I don't know!"

"No. No, you don't. You're scared and confused and nothing makes sense. You'd prefer it if we wanted to torture you because that you would understand. But we don't. And you don't. I'm not asking you to trust us; that's far too much. I'm asking you not to disbelieve us."

She stares at him for a long while. She stares at Romana and Jack standing over them. Then slowly she nods.

xxx

She picks a room. It has nothing in it except a bed. It's perfect. She visits the wardrobe room and spends hours in there, eventually emerging with a pair of jeans and an oversized sweatshirt.

They don't see much of her for the first week. She never appears in the console room and very rarely in the kitchen.

Ten days after her awakening, she's standing in the kitchen when they arrive for breakfast, amazingly early (counting the hours since the end of the Tardis' night cycle) and together as the Doctor and Romana had dragged Jack from his bed so that he can fulfil his promise of making breakfast.

She's wearing the same sweatshirt but a long loose skirt. She tells them that she has accepted that she is in a parallel universe, that they are who they say they are and that this is their Tardis. She asks whether they can return to hers and receives a negative answer.

"I wish I could say sorry" is her only reply before she walks out of the kitchen. The Doctor knows what she's doing. It won't help. It might numb the pain for a while but she'll have to face it eventually. When she does they'll be there.

She meets them in the console room in the third week, wearing a simple dress and a cardigan, and asks if they can go somewhere. After nearly a month of being Tardis-bound, perhaps they can get some semblance of not-at-all-normal-normality back. They go to Earth. After all, Jackie hasn't seen them for about a month.

They don't tell Jackie about her; they couldn't anyway. The only one who knows her story is Delta and she's not telling. Yet.

So they just say they picked her up on Asinta. Any questions about time period, background or species are either avoided or met with edited answers. As in the entire truth omitted.

They ignore the awkwardness and throw themselves into the universe.

xxx

"Doctor."

The Doctor pokes his head out from under the console. "Hello there, Delta."

"How much do you know?"

"Not much. It's mostly guesswork, after I have struggled with the concept of there being at least one parallel version of me."

She smiles faintly. "Your thinking is still constrained by Gallifrey."

She doesn't miss the sudden flicker of pain that crosses his face.

"How much do you know?" they whisper together.

Delta kneels down to his level and slowly, deliberately, they reach out to each other.

xxx

The timelines split, cross and run parallel again. They can see this golden thread running throughout the fabric of space and time, the gap between the two strands widening. The thread that Delta is following suddenly snaps, throwing her onto the Doctor's.

She watches Romana walk away into E-space.

He watches Romana decorate an infant's shoulder, arm and stomach with Gallifreyan text before leaving her in the care of Causpian nuns and turning back to Gallifrey.

She watches screaming hordes decimated by Daleks; once pleasant planets turned to desolate battlegrounds.

He watches burning material being ripped from skin. The Doctor only takes a second to skim the characters revealed. They fight side by side from then on.

She watches a planet burn, indiscriminate millions screaming their last.

He watches them surprised by a patrol. The Doctor pushes her to the ground, hiding her. The Daleks sweep away. The Oncoming Storm is ended.

She watches countless Daleks dissolve into golden dust.

He watches countless Daleks pollute every corner of that universe; Gallifrey still physically there but devoid of life.

She watches a woman be torn from his side by a time storm.

Then they both see a great expanse of blackness. They watch a Tardis throw itself away from a strangely shining patch of darkness, rip through a barrier it shouldn't even know exists and drop into another patch of darkness with the same strange luminescence.

It performs the reverse manoeuvre and suddenly their consciousness expands. They can see the blackness stretching into infinity in all directions, patches with the strange luminescence scattered throughout. Some burn brilliantly, the watery light of the universe the Tardis comes from glows almost imperceptibly brighter as it re-enters, the light of the one that it had visited slowly dying away.

Then their consciousness suddenly retracts and they find their awareness shrinking so rapidly it feels as if they are racing towards something. Multiverse, universe, Tardis, console room, figure…

Two figures that slump, unconscious.

xxx

"Doctor? Doctor? Delta?" Jack adds as an afterthought. She's been with them for a while, but she's still not really one of them. It might help if they actually had any idea about her background. She knows about them, knows about Rose and Matthew but her own history is a blank. It might help if he could read the Gallifreyan.

He wanders into the console room and instantly spots Delta sprawled across the floor. He rushes over and also discovers the Doctor underneath the console.

"Romana!" he calls.

She quickly appears in the doorway. Her eyes widen and she's at his side in an instant.

"What happened? Are they all right?"

Jack hauls the Doctor out and lays him across the grating. "Hello?"

He shakes him by the shoulder. The Doctor's eyes flick open and he smiles.

"Doctor, thank goodness."

"There are others," the Doctor says dreamily before his eyes flutter shut again.

This time, Jack gets no response.

xxx

Jack wakes and discovers that two previously occupied beds and one previously occupied chair are no longer occupied by their respective occupants.

He discovers them all in the most-used kitchen; the Doctor cooking breakfast, Romana in her favourite spot perched on the worktop and Delta sitting at the table.

Romana waves at him and they all look round.

"Hello Jack. Sorry about not waking you, but you looked so peaceful. And you humans need your beauty sleep."

Jack remembers this argument being used against him before. Like before, he splutters indignantly and asks why he needs more sleep than someone else. This time it's Delta.

"Because you're human. As the Doctor said." she answers.

"And you're not?"

She gives him a look. It's the Doctor who answers.

"Are you telling me that you never noticed the heartbeat, Jack?"

"Huh?"

"In fact, I'm the one with the least human blood. You're a pure human, Romana's three-quarters human, the Doctor's half-human and I'm a quarter human."

"Gaahh…" Jack's vocal chords finally catch up with his brain and he manages to splutter "Time Lord."

"Have you been drinking Pitrainian vodka again?" the Doctor raises an eyebrow.

"Nuh…no." How had they all known? How was it completely obvious?

"Well then, I believe that some introductions are in order. Jack, this is Delta Astra, daughter of the Doctor and Romanadvoratrelundar."

"You said it wasn't like that!" Jack says accusingly.

"It wasn't. Not for me. Would you feel better if I said a Doctor? She was brought up by Causpian nuns, but Romana visited her often. The Gallifreyan was to identify her to the Doctor. Which it did. They fought together in the Time War."

"Stupid idiot threw himself in front of Daleks to save me," Delta says harshly. It had been quite hurtful to hear her life laid out in a few sentences. "I never said goodbye to either of them. I never saw Gallifrey. I can never say sorry."

"It gets different. It gets buried," the Doctor murmurs.

"So the universe I came from is going to be overrun by Daleks, the Time Lords will all die and it's my fault."

They all opened their mouths.

"No, don't say it. I saw it. I don't exist in this universe, and you went on to save the universe. I destroyed my universe, yet I survived. Why me?"

"I thought the same. I wasn't supposed to survive. The Tardis took me away," the Doctor whispers. For a moment Jack can see the damage now hidden beneath the surface.

Tears gather at the corner of Delta's eyes. "They're all gone. They lost. Everyone lost." She takes a large, shuddering breath. "No way back. Oh _God_."

Romana jumps down and hugs the highest part of Delta she can reach. The Doctor is more hesitant and Jack stands by and pats her shoulder awkwardly. As the walls break down, she becomes much more one of them.

xxx

"So where shall we go? Come on! Give me a place and time! Anyone!"

"Mayblossom, 623,999," Romana says absently.

Everyone stops what they are doing, which for the Doctor is stroking the console, for Jack changing the batteries in his sonic blaster, (It never hurts to be prepared. It's already helped them a few times and it's useful to have in case the Doctor loses his sonic screwdriver again) and for Delta reading.

"Where's that?" the Doctor asks.

Romana looks confused. "Where's what?"

"Mayblossom. You asked to go there."

"When?"

"Just now."

"Oh. I don't know."

"Where did you hear it?"

"I don't…when my head hurt." She's getting scared. There's knowledge in her head that doesn't seem to be hers.

The Doctor quickly searches. "There's no record of a place called Mayblossom."

"Well, let's not go there then!"

But he won't let it go. "Do you know anything else?"

"No!" But she still searches her mind, cursing her curiosity even as she does so. A phrase barges into her mind and tumbles from her mouth before she can stop herself.

"Earth Colony 2794."

The Doctor runs another search. "Colonised in the late 624th century, a rebellion was staged just over a decade later. 623,999, I believe you said!"

His hands fly across the controls. He stands back as they start to move. It's not impossible. A human colony that has declared independence. They might be there.

xxx

They step outside into utter confusion. The air is filled with shouts and many spacecraft hang in the sky. As far as they can see, there seems to be a long queue for pods ferrying people up to the spaceships, and a confused mass of people just milling around. There are many containment capsules being ferried around and official-looking, uniform wearers attempting unsuccessfully to control everything.

Romana's attention is captured by two women, both wearing identical expressions that say clearly 'How can you be so stupid?'

"You want to stay here? Here, Lydia? How can you want to stay here?"

"I think the question is, how can you bear to go back after what happened to Father?"

"But there'll be nothing here!"

"It'll be better than out there. I am _staying_."

"Oh no, you're not. I promised Mama I would look after you."

"Emily, I'm not twelve anymore! I can look after myself. If you want to go, go. I'm not going anywhere."

And with that she disappears into the crowd. The woman called Emily looks between the point she disappeared and the waiting spaceships, obviously torn. With a sigh of defeat, she joins the queue.

"Jack? Jack!" the Doctor yells, looking around for the renegade Time Agent.

"Over there," Delta points.

"Honestly, see a pretty face and off he goes." The Doctor starts to push his way through the crowd.

"Two pretty faces," Delta corrects.

"Must be why I stick with you; you've all got such pretty faces. Doctor, Romana, Delta, this is Daphne and this is Hattie. Hattie, Daphne, this is the Doctor, Romana and Delta." Jack indicates them in turn. They smile at each other.

"You haven't seen a girl, by any chance? About so high, incredibly skinny. We lost her in all this. She was in a bad mood because her family's leaving but she wants to stay."

"Pixie's always in a bad mood," the girl called Hattie mutters.

"Rachel_will_ skin you alive if she hears you calling her that again."

"I know. Why do you think I say it?"

"Um, excuse me?" They seem to have forgotten entirely about the time-travellers standing next to them.

"Oh, are you still there?"

"Can you tell us where we are?"

They both look at Jack very strangely. The Doctor quickly intervenes.

"Don't mind him; he's been drinking Pitrainian vodka. He never believes us when we try to tell him the place and date. Would you mind?"

Hattie speaks to Jack very slowly. "This is Earth Colony 2794. It has severed all links to the Ninth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Everyone is queuing up to be evacuated."

Daphne joins in, speaking just as patronisingly. Jack shoots a poisonous look at the Doctor. "It is the year 623,991, the 624th century in Old Earth terms." She turns back to Hattie. "What is it measured from?" At her blank look, she elaborates. "What event is that system working from?"

Hattie shrugs. "I don't know. Ask an Old Earth historian. Ask Lydia. It's not important, probably some completely fictitious event, totally irrelevant. Perhaps something to do with that thing Lydia told us about, what was it…raliga."

"Religion?" Romana suggests.

The Doctor ignores them all. Romana had said 623,999, Daphne had said it was 623,991. Eight years too early. But perhaps the Tardis had brought them early for a reason. He does his best to ignore the knowledge that he's clutching at straws.

"Do either of you know a woman with blonde or brown hair? Rose Tyler, she's called. She should have a child with her. A boy called Matthew."

Daphne and Hattie both shake their heads.

"Thanks anyway." He knew they weren't here before he asked. He's now certain that it must be them on the other end of the trace. Using Matthew's blood. His heart lurches as he realises the trace hasn't affected him for weeks.

"Romana, have you felt the trace recently?" He tries not to let his worry show in his face or his voice.

"No," she frowns. "Not since I had to go to school. Ages ago."

He takes a deep breath. _Please, please, don't let anything have happened to them._

"Okay then, I think we need to be going. Thanks for everything, Hattie and Daphne. I think we need to go over there." He waves a hand in the direction he thinks the Tardis must be.

Delta, who has been in discussion with Hattie and Daphne, looks up. "I… I'm not coming. I'm going to stay here. I can help these people."

They all understand.

"Do you need anything from the Tardis?"

She shakes her head just as Jack reappears with a bag.

"No." She doesn't want any more baggage, literal or metaphorical.

"Don't be stupid," he pushes it into her arms. "You need more than one set of clothes."

"Thanks," she mutters. The heavy cylindrical objects she can feel at the bottom certainly aren't clothes. While she has no doubt that tinned food will be needed, she does expect some questions as to how she has tinned food that passed its best before date over half a million years ago.

"Take care of yourself," the Doctor whispers in her ear.

"Find a place," Jack murmurs in her other ear. Everyone needs a place in life. His is with the Doctor and Romana. Hers isn't. Not yet.

"I'll see you sometime," Romana says, Delta kneeling down to her level.

"I'd like that. See you then."

She watches as they disappear in the mass of people. She doesn't move until she hears the grating engines above the noise of the crowds.

"Shall we go and find your Rachel then?"

"Pixie," Hattie corrects.

A/N: Sorry if this chapter appears somewhat disjointed and completely- blurgh. Can't think of the word. I wasn't at all sure about this idea; it was just one of _those _ideas. Thanks to **agapi16** for listening to me when I was trying to explain it and not make it sound completely and utterly ridiculous. I hope it worked.

Thank you to everyone who has been patiently waiting for an update. Massive thanks to the small minority who are now going to review. There is a definite discrepancy as this story has 65 alerts set on it yet the most reviews I have ever received for a chapter is 15.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or any of its trademarks. If I had a Tardis, I wouldn't hang around here. I tolerate this century but I don't enjoy it.

Rose catches sight of him out of the corner of her eye. He's dressed similarly to the natives, except a bit more expensively. The crowds open and close behind him as he strides through, giving him his own bubble of personal space. Rose pushes her way through the crowd, clutching Matthew's hand.

"Doctor! Doctor!"

She manages to catch hold of his arm and he swings around. This isn't the Doctor. All the physical features are there, but set in anger and contempt. His eyes hold no recognition or love, no fond emotion at all. They hold only disbelief and disgust. He gingerly flicks her hand off his arm. She stands frozen. This is just like when she was young and mistook a strange woman for her mother. But so much worse.

"Guards!" he calls and his voice is like the Doctor's but higher and colder. Big men appear around them in an instant. "She has _violated_ my person! Take her. And the other strangers, they must be her friends."

xxx

Lydia hunches in the corner of the cell and glares at him. She has spent a very long time in solitary confinement. It's impossible to measure: even if she had a window, the two moons wouldn't tell her anything, she has no timepiece on her, and her sleep cycles are all over the place. But it must have been a few weeks, at least. Such a long time without seeing another living soul, unless you counted the hand that pushed food through the flap, wondering what had happened to Rose and Matthew, wondering whether she would ever see daylight again and all because the heir to the kingdom happened to be an exact physical double of Rose's Doctor.

After all that, she had been glad for the company when someone had been thrown in her cell. But after only ten minutes, she is wishing him and his infernal spoons at the bottom of a very deep ocean. A sea of acid might be good, surely there is somewhere like that in the universe?

She amuses herself for a short time, imagining various painful and inventive things that involve him and his spoons. Then comes up with some cruel but not entirely untruthful things to say about his apparent fondness for question marks designs. And then decides she has exhausted all the interesting possibilities of being annoyed with him and asks him, politely, to stop playing the spoons.

"Don't worry, my dear." He rolls his r's with a soft Old Earth accent. She's noticed that she seems to understand everyone they come across as they hop around. Matthew must have built some kind of a translator into that device of his.

"Ace should be along soon."

_Marvellous_, she thinks sourly. _The first company I've had in ages and he's going to escape aided by this Ace._

"So what's your name?"

"The Doctor."

She gapes. "No, you're not."

He sighs and searches her face. "As I don't remember you, I would imagine you have met a future me."

"A future…you? You mean that they were all _you_? All the same person? It's not possible."

"Professor!" The shout comes from somewhere outside, muffled by the thick stone walls.

"In here, Ace!"

The voice comes again after a few seconds.

"You've got fifteen seconds!"

Lydia wouldn't have believed that the portly man could have moved that quickly if she hadn't seen it.

"Come on!" he beckons from behind the overturned bed. "We've only got ten seconds at the most."

"But she said…"

He drags her behind the bed. "We're talking about Ace's fuses here, she…"

There's an explosion someway off and something that sounds like a curse.

"Professor!" It is the mysterious Ace's voice again, sounding a lot nearer.

"In_here_, Ace!"

A few seconds later, another explosion, a much louder explosion, rocks the cell. The dust settles, allowing them to see the hole at floor-level in the wall.

A girl's face appears in the hole.

"Professor? Do you want to be left alone?"

Lydia and the Doctor pick themselves up.

"Are you Lydia?"

Lydia nods.

"I rescued your friends here. Sorry about the wait, Professor, I got the wrong cell."

"Rose? Matthew?"

"Lydia! You're safe!"

"After you, my dear." He indicates the hole in the wall.

Having crawled through the hole, she discovers Rose and Matthew both looking much the worse for wear. She knows she can't look any better herself. Her hair must be a few inches shorter for all the length entangled in knots. She's been wearing the same clothes for weeks and they itch. She hopes it's just the dirt. And the clothes hang looser than they used to. Judging by Rose and Matthew's appearances, Rose has been giving Matthew most of her food.

"How are you?"

"Fine. And you?"

"Okay."

Neither of them mention the time the guards had been drunk. It had been the drunkenness that saved them; the guards had been too drunk to fit the keys to the locks on their doors.

Rose doesn't tell of the time the Governor came in to inspect the alien prisoner. She hit him over the head with their water bucket and barricaded the door. They had had no food for some time afterwards.

Lydia doesn't tell of the screams she sometimes heard.

Hopefully, it's behind them.

"Do you have the…our transport?"

"They took it. And all our possessions."

"Mine too."

xxx

Two hours, one toppled regime, a thorough wash, change of clothes and large meal later, they bid goodbye to the Doctor and Ace and clutching their newly-reclaimed possessions (which had thankfully been put aside for detailed examination at some time rather than being claimed by anyone), they vanish into thin air.

xxx

They had picked Jackie up, skilfully avoided her questions about the sudden disappearance of Delta and let the Tardis choose the destination. They've ended up at the beach with the purple sand again.

Romana doesn't seem to be enjoying herself as she usually does. She hasn't moved from the spot since they sat down and is silent and withdrawn, digging a hole with her hands and contemplating the pebbles she uncovers as if they hold the answer to all the universe's problems before flinging them into the sea with some force

"Romana?" The Doctor sits down beside her.

She ignores him and continues to throw stones out to sea. A few minutes pass.

"Do you regret it?" she says abruptly.

"What?"

"Do you regret it? Romana, Delta…me."

"Romana? Talk about not meant to be. Their child turned out to be a fatal weakness. Although, in every set of universes, there's a universe with Time Lords. Maybe somewhere they lived happily. Maybe somewhere I didn't go to investigate that time storm and we live happily. Maybe somewhere I wasn't born, and the Time War never happened." He shakes his head as if dispelling dreams and turns to her, his voice becoming much more urgent. "But, understand this, no matter what, I will never, _ever_ regret the moment when you came into my life."

She smiles and flops across his lap. "Alright."

xxx

Jack is stretched out full-length, fast asleep and blissfully unaware of the sand cocoon that has been built around him. Jackie and Romana are engaged in building a sand castle and the Doctor is inspecting the stones that he has uncovered. Some have a strange reflective quality.

Angling it to catch the light, he catches a glimpse of red hair and twists around, finding himself looking straight at Johanna Tyler.

She runs. He chases her. She stumbles and slips on the sand, he's by her side in an instant.

"Right, question time. Who are you and what are you doing here?"

He stares into her eyes and something seems to crumble. What he sees behind the walls shakes him profoundly.

"I just wanted to see…to remember when we were happy."

"Romana," he whispers.

This older, different, and infinitely more pain-filled Romana stares back.

"Situations that I needed rescuing from are hardly my happiest memories. I just wanted to see…to assure myself that we were happy once; I wasn't just seeing it with rose-coloured glasses. Ha. Rose." She gives a weak smile.

"Romana?" the Doctor repeats disbelievingly. "Oh, I don't even want to think about the paradoxes involved in this. She's… you're only alive because of the actions of her future self, that is, you but without her future…you interfering, she wouldn't have grown up to become you to save herself…" the Doctor trails off.

"Predestination paradox. Nice waking up from your first regeneration to realise that you've got to save your own life sometime before you regenerate again. Gives you a sense of purpose, you know?" She speaks lightly but he can sense the bitterness beneath the surface.

"You never did like being told what to do."

She draws a shuddering breath. "Do you know how hard it was? To see myself, so innocent. To see you, the Doctor of my childhood, miraculously returned to life by the science of time travel. And you didn't know me, and I couldn't say anything."

"I'm dead, aren't I?" he curses himself. He sounds so selfish.

"Yes. Oh, yes. You stupid idiot. I…you… I shouldn't say anything."

Standing up, she looks over to where she can discern the figures of her family. No distance at all in space. A significant amount of time. A lifetime of experience. The one dimension that she can't travel in.

"I'm not alone. Remember Delta? We went back for her."

The Doctor nods silently, wishing that she could answer the unspoken question that they both know is there.

"Now this is over. All obligations fulfilled. I can live my own life."

She pecks him on the cheek. "Goodbye, Dadtor."

He hugs her impulsively. "Goodbye, Romana."

He watches her walk steadily across the beach, not looking back.

A few minutes later, he hears the familiar sound of a Type 40 Tardis.

xxx

Romana is frantically rebuilding the walls around the castle as the sea erodes them. The Doctor has previously explained how pointless this is, but Jackie told him to shut up very sharply.

He's sitting there grumbling about this, and how Jackie is probably going to expect Romana to believe in the Easter Bunny next, just to keep up appearances. He's grieving and giving thanks in equal measure. Grieving for what she will become. Giving thanks that she still has these years of innocence. Then suddenly, it feels as if someone is trying to drag his insides out through the pores in his skin.

Judging by the fact that Romana has collapsed, it seems it has affected her too. She's ruined her castle.

But the Doctor is happy.

"They're coming," he mutters, standing up and beginning to stagger back to the Tardis. "Come on! They're coming!"

Jackie is left to wake Jack and pick Romana up.

xxx

The trace died halfway again. They're hanging around in the vortex while the Doctor tries to make some improvements to his trace-tracing equipment. Jackie isn't very happy about this; she still isn't used to sleeping on the Tardis. But they all know that Rose might be close. The Doctor's sent everyone to bed; he said he needed absolutely no disturbances. Romana isn't very happy about this; she isn't tired, she slept two nights ago. But it's something to do.

xxx

The older Romana looks at herself sharply.

"What are you doing here?"

Romana shrugs and sits down on a comfy chair that has just appeared.

"The Doctor sent us all to bed. I wasn't tired."

"Oh, so you decide to occupy your mind by finding ours? You shouldn't be here."

"You're me, are you then? How come I still have to wear glasses?"

"Luck of the regeneration. I don't wear them all the time, just like you don't."

"Why not?"

"One, I don't like them. Two, they always fall off when I run."

Romana snuggles into her chair. Something about this place makes her feel incredibly comfortable and serene. It is quite peaceful, but it makes her head feel rather empty.

"Oh, that's right. You're the one who keeps saving me. What's the name for a paradox like that?"

"Predestination paradox," Romana replies. "I meant what I said. You shouldn't be here. I don't remember this. And I'm not starting to remember it either."

"Well, maybe I won't grow up to be you. Or maybe I just won't remember it when I wake up. I suppose I am asleep?"

"Your body is. Your mind isn't. That's why you're here."

"Mmmm," she agrees languidly, stretching her corporeal limbs, her 'dream' limbs and her mind lazily.

Her mind snaps back at the accidental contact and the warm comfort that has been blanketing her mind is ripped away.

"I won't become you," Romana whispers. "I won't let myself. I don't want to."

The other looks at her sadly.

"Your mind is so dark. It's full of shadows. You've lost so many…you lost the Doctor. How do you bear it? His mind feels like this sometimes, right deep down when he's not paying attention. He's much better at hiding than you are. The pain is so raw, it hurts. I won't become you, I won't. You're _tired_."

"Yes," Romana agrees. "And you're not." She gently pushes her back into her own mind. She watches the dream-pictures that her younger self's mind conjures up for a while.

"Sweet dreams," she whispers. "We deserve another chance."

xxx

Jackie cleans the mess left by the smashed bowl of cornflakes while Jack holds Romana. She's beginning to wish there was some kind of warning. _I wonder what that ache means? It's a warning to put down whatever you're holding and curl up into a small ball._ It seems to be almost as bad as when it first started. Perhaps that means that they're getting closer. She finishes mopping up the milk and cornflakes and has just dropped the newspaper-wrapped china pieces into the bin when the Tardis settles.

xxx

It's beginning to dawn on Rose that they could do this for years before they find the Doctor and Romana in the right time period. So far, they've either run into younger versions of her or past incarnations of the Doctor. And following the Doctor around, especially when he's not looking out for you and won't attempt to rescue you, is quite hazardous.

Then they land. In front of them are two police boxes.

xxx

The Doctor looks at the scanner. A police box is apparently sitting in front of them, a few metres away.

"I seem to have crossed my own timeline again." he mutters and strides for the doors, throwing his scarf over his shoulder.

He steps out of the Tardis and notices a man in brown and a small girl with his scarf rapidly approaching.

The man does not appear to be happy to see him. No, he _is_ happy to see him, but not in a way that he will appreciate.

xxx

Jack is quite scared by the expression on the Doctor's face as he sees the man step out of the other Tardis. A cross between a child at Christmas and an innocent man who has spent many years in prison, is freed and finds the man who put him in there completely defenceless.

"I remember," he grins.

Then he's at the doors. Romana runs after him.

xxx

"Thank you for that. I have just fulfilled a wish I have held for three years. And preserved the timeline at the same time."

The Tenth Doctor holds the door to the Fourth Doctor's Tardis open for him.

A blonde girl looks slightly amused at the spectacle that presents itself. For a second, the Doctor sees her as he last did.

_She knew perfectly well what he was going to do. Neither of them had voiced it; they both knew that the other knew. He had begged her to come with him. He didn't want to die up there alone. She knew perfectly well why he wanted her to come with her. She even knew the reasons he didn't know, or didn't admit to himself. She refused, politely but firmly. _

'_My place is with my people."_

_He didn't turn back at the corner. He knew what he'd see; he'd see her distant back as she walked in the opposite direction. So he remembered her as he last saw her; dressed in full presidential robes, looking up into his face. _

"Romana, meet Romana." The very young, more-human-than-not Romana smiles at Romana. The not-quite-so-young, completely Gallifreyan Romana looks uncertain, as if she's hoping this isn't a future incarnation.

He takes in her costume. "I've heard Paris is very nice at this time of year."

xxx

Lydia tries to shake Rose awake. She recognises the man in brown from Rose's photo and suspects they may have arrived at their destination. He and a small girl, who Lydia assumes is Romana, Matthew's twin, travel the short distance between the blue boxes, and meet the man who had emerged from the other blue box. The three all disappear inside the other man's blue box and Rose's Doctor and Romana emerge shortly, after which the blue box fades away. Lydia doesn't even blink. It's much the same thing as they've been doing, as far as she can see.

But seeing the man who steps out of the Tardis amazes her. Then infuriates her.

xxx

Jack rubs his cheek.

"Did you deserve that?" Romana asks.

"Not sure I did."

The Doctor rolls his eyes and makes a mental note to hide all the copies of all the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

"You…you… you!" Lydia tries and fails to come up with an appropriate insult. "Two years and you just vanish."

They all stare at her in complete incomprehension.

"And who are you?"

"Don't pretend you don't know, you lying…"

"I have never…"

"Excuse me!" Romana yells. "Can you start again, from the beginning and leaving out the insults?"

"Ten years ago, he comes to Earth Colony whatever-number-we-were. And James stays…"

"Whoa, whoa, hold on there for a minute. What do you think my name is?" Jack interrupts.

"James. James Whiteside."

"I think you have the wrong man. I am _not _James Whiteside."

"But you look exactly like…" Lydia trails off and mentally starts kicking herself. She spent at least a month in imprisonment because Rose found someone who looked exactly the same as her Doctor. What happened to learning from mistakes?

"Oh. Sorry." She resists the urge to hide her burning face. "You're the Doctor? And this is Romana?"

She notices how the two men instantly take up protective stances.

"Why?"

"I just landed with your wife and son."

xxx

Rose stirs. She swats ineffectually at the person next to her. "Get to your own bed, Matthew."

"Rose?" She knows the voice wasn't real, couldn't be real, but she allows herself to believe in it for a minute, like always.

She sighs, a small smile crossing her face.

"Rose?" She could have sworn she had heard it, heard it through her ears. Now is the time to open her eyes and reconcile herself to the reality before her hopes build up.

Rose opens her eyes.

xxx

The Doctor is lost again as soon as she opens her eyes. Deep brown eyes that he's seen nearly every day of the recent past, yet has not seen for six years. Romana's eyes are not the same as Rose's eyes. And Rose doesn't need all that mascara she used to wear. Her eyes are still beautiful without it.

"Doctor?" She doesn't dare to believe it yet, is disbelieving what her senses are telling her.

"Rose. Oh, Rose."

Nobody is sure who made the first move, but somehow they end up clinging together, so tightly, as if they believe the other would disappear again if they let go. She sobs into his shoulder as he murmurs her name over and over, the only word he can say.

Matthew makes a face at Romana. She replies with an infinitely more impressive grimace, personally taught to her by the Ghix of Basf.

xxx

A few hundred years and light years away, a woman with orange hair that has earned her the stunningly original nickname of 'Carrot Top' watches her so much younger self double over with laughter. She watches the blue aliens advance and times it just right. Darting forward, she grabs her younger self's hand and pulls her away. It probably doesn't matter whether she was a second out; after all she was saved by a different Romana. She carried out her promise and didn't let herself become that woman. She knows she's not her. Perhaps the girl whose hand she's holding won't grow up to become her. Perhaps this sequence repeats itself over and over, always producing a different Romana.

She lets the hood fall back and her hair stream out behind her. As they run, she shouts inside her head.

The word that started everything.

"Run!"

A/N: The End. I hope I didn't disappoint anyone. I was really nervous about writing the reunion scene as I have had reviewers saying they were looking forward to it for a long time. I am currently playing with the idea of a sequel but I am very cautious. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. And I will make one last plea; if you have read this, whether you liked it or not, please, please review and tell me so.


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